Eugene Bullard being beaten by police officers and rioters. [Source: Howard Fast]The second Peekskill concert, organized by left-wing activists and featuring African-American singer Paul Robeson (see September 4, 1949), takes place successfully after the first was disrupted by a large, angry mob (see August 27, 1949). But another mob has gathered, and though they are unsuccessful in stopping the concert from taking place, they are ready for the audience and participants at the concert’s end. Rock Attacks, Roadblocks - The audience members, with many women and children in their ranks, attempt to leave, mostly by car, and are told by security guards to roll up their windows as they are driving out, as the mob is apparently throwing rocks and other missiles. (A New York Times reporter later writes of the large piles of stones piled up about every 20 feet down one road, apparently placed their ahead of time for use as missiles.) However, the long, slow procession of cars attempting to leave the venue is halted when a small group of police officers attack the cars, including the vehicle bearing Robeson. None of the cars’ occupants are injured, though many windshields are smashed and fenders beaten in. Novelist and concert organizer Howard Fast, driving his own car, turns onto a secondary road to attempt to leave the venue, but his car is assaulted by a knot of six or seven rock throwers, accompanied by two police officers who do not throw rocks. Fast believes the police officers are there to protect the assailants if any of the cars stops to launch a counterattack. Fast will later learn that all of the secondary roads have similar knots of rock-throwing people in place to inflict damage on cars; some are blocked by piles of logs and boulders. He drives through several such ambushes, but he and the people with him escape injury. 145 Reported Injuries - Others are not so lucky; many people, including women and children, are seriously injured by rocks and broken glass. One concert goer, Eugene Bullard, is spat upon by a veteran and spits back; he is thrown to the ground and badly beaten by a group of police officers. Afterwards, Fast will report, the area hospitals quickly fill up with victims of the barrages, “the blinded, the bleeding and the wounded, the cut, lacerated faces, the fractured skulls, the infants with glass in their eyes, the men and women trampled and beaten, the Negroes beaten and mutilated, all the terribly hurt who had come to listen to music.” A union trademan, Sidney Marcus, is wounded so badly by a rock to the face that he requires weeks of reconstructive surgery. Fast later learns that approximately a thousand union workers had chosen to stay behind as something of a “rear guard” to protect the last of the audience members; they were assaulted by a combination of mob members and police officers, badly beaten, and threatened with incarceration. (Twenty-five were indeed arrested and taken away.) For Fast, the night ends when he returns to the area to look for a group of stranded audience members, and is shot at. He does not find the stranded people. The final tally is 145 concert-goers injured. [Fast, 1951; White Plains Reporter Dispatch, 9/5/1982; National Public Radio, 9/5/1999]Arrests and Lawsuits - Twelve protesters are arrested; five later plead guilty to minor offenses. No one among the concert-goers and “Robesonites” is arrested. Author Roger Williams will later write: “As the victims of the violence they were hardly subject to arrest, except that the prevailing local attitude held them guilty of provoking the attacks made upon them. As the Peekskill mayor, John N. Schneider, put it, the responsibility ‘rests solely on the Robesonites, as they insisted on coming to a community where they weren’t wanted.’” Numerous civil lawsuits will be filed on behalf of groups of victims; none will be successful. History Professor: Peekskill Becomes an 'Endorsement of ... Persecution' - Much later, history professor James Shenton will say, “Peekskill opened up what was to become extensive public endorsement of the prosecution and persecution of so-called Communists.” Trying to Forget - Years later, the memory of the riots still haunts the area and intimidates many residents, according to Williams’s 1976 report. Residents refuse to discuss the riots, some for fear of reprisals even decades later. Williams will recount the story of one high school teacher, Anne Plunkett, who was amazed that her children knew nothing of the riots, even though some of them were the children of participants. But when she assigns her students the riots as an optional class project, as Plunkett will recall: “The first time, librarians wouldn’t give the kids access to the back newspapers. The next time, I was called to the principal’s office and told that parents had been telephoning to complain about my ‘upsetting and exciting the children unnecessarily.’” [American Heritage, 3/1976]

Senator Strom Thurmond (right) supervises the typing of an early draft of the document that will come to be known as the ‘Southern Manifesto.’ [Source: Strom Thurmond Institute]A hundred and one congressmen, mostly conservative Southern Democrats, sign a document forwarded to President Eisenhower that becomes known as the “Southern Manifesto.” The document, formally entitled “The Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” is prompted by the recent Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision mandating the desegregation of American public schools, and is designed to pressure wavering Southern lawmakers into defying the Court’s decision as part of what researcher Tony Badger will later call “the massive resistance strategy so passionately advocated by the conservatives.” It is read aloud on the floor of the Senate by Walter George (D-GA), and was originally conceived by Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC) with the assistance of his colleague Harry Byrd (D-VA), though the final version was tempered by a rewrite overseen by Senator Richard Russell (D-GA). The “Manifesto” declares that in certain instances, states are free to ignore federal laws and court decisions such as Brown v. Board. The document declares the Court decision an attempt to “substitute naked power for established law,” calls it “a clear abuse of judicial power,” and says that the states can and must defy the Court’s decision in the interest of establishing the rights of the states against the federal government. The principle of “separate but equal” treatment of white and black Americans, codified in an 1849 case and upheld by the 1896 Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, is, the signers state, “the established law of the land” and cannot be overturned by the current Court. It is up to the states, not the federal government, to determine if and when they will desegregate their separate school systems. Far from mandating equal treatment, the signers state, the Brown decision “destroys the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races,” and “has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding.” The “judicial encroachment” of the decision must be resisted by “any lawful means,” they write. The signers conclude, “Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the States and of the people be made secure against judicial usurpation,” and ask their supporters not to give in to the “agitators” determined to sow chaos and disorder in the name of desegregation. [US Senate, 3/12/1956; Time, 3/26/1956; Badger, 4/1997]Disparate Group of Non-Signers - Cambridge University scholar Tony Badger will later write of the Southern lawmakers who refuse to sign the document, “The evidence from Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and North Carolina highlights the diversity of political opinion among the non-signers—from New Deal liberal to right-wing Republican ideologue—and the disparate sources for their racial moderation—national political ambitions, party loyalty, experience in the Second World War, Cold War fears, religious belief, and an urban political base.” [Badger, 4/1997]Thurmond Calls NAACP 'Professional Racist Agitators,' Says Southern Whites Are Nation's 'Greatest Minority' - After the reading, Thurmond delivers a far less measured television address, calling the organization that brought the original lawsuit, the NAACP, a group of “professional racist agitators” and saying: “All of us have heard a great deal of talk about the persecution of minority groups. The white people of the South are the greatest minority in this nation. They deserve consideration and understanding instead of the persecution of twisted propaganda.” After his speech, one Georgia woman praises Thurmond’s “courage and wisdom,” and asks: “Wouldn’t it be possible to remove much of the Negro population from the South? I sincerely wish that this might be done, and would be glad to even contribute personally to the expense of such a plan.” [Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300]Counterattack in Congress - In the following days, a succession of Northern Democrats lambast the manifesto on the Senate and House floor, and none of the signatories rise to speak in its defense. Wayne Morse (D-OR) says the document advocates nothing less than the “nullification” of the federal government, and if taken to its logical conclusion, the dissolution of the United States into 50 disparate entities. “If the gentlemen from the South really want to take such action,” he says, “let them propose a constitutional amendment that will deny to the colored people of the country equality of rights under the Constitution, and see how far they will get with the American people.” [Time, 3/26/1956; Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300] One Southern senator says shortly after its reading, “Now, if these Northerners won’t attack us and get mad and force us to close ranks, most of us will forget the whole thing and maybe we can pretty soon pretend it never happened.” [Time, 3/26/1956] The “Manifesto” heralds a split in the Democratic Party, between conservative, segregationist “Dixiecrat” Southerners and the moderate-to-liberal remainder of the party’s lawmakers. Thurmond will lead an exodus of the segregationists from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party shortly thereafter. [Cohodas, 1993, pp. 284-300]

Life Magazine cover featuring Agnew. [Source: Southern Methodist University]Vice President Spiro Agnew, fresh from helping Richard Nixon win the 1968 election by viciously attacking their Democratic opponents, wins a reputation as a tough-talking, intensely negative public presence in Washington. Much of Agnew’s tirades are crafted by White House speechwriters Pat Buchanan and William Safire. In 1969, Agnew derides antiwar protesters, saying, “A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.” [Time, 9/30/1996] Student war protesters “have never done a productive thing in their lives,” and, “They take their tactics from Fidel Castro and their money from daddy.” [Chicago Sun-Times, 10/11/1998] In 1970, he attacks the American media and critics of the Nixon administration alike, telling a San Diego audience that “we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.” Agnew attacks enemies of the administration as “pusillanimous pussyfooters,” “vicars of vacillation,” and “the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” Democrats are “radic-libs” and “ideological eunuchs.” In Des Moines, reading a speech written by Buchanan, Agnew slams the US media industry, saying it is dominated by a “tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one.” Agnew’s unrelenting attacks on the press raise, reporter Lance Morrow writes in 1996, “issues of media bias, arrogance and unaccountability that are still banging around in the American mind.” Agnew is undone by his own negativity, earning a barrage of critical press coverage for, among other things, calling an Asian-American reporter a “fat Jap,” referring to a group of Polish-Americans as “Polacks,” and dismissing the plight of America’s poor by saying, “To some extent, if you’ve seen one city slum, you’ve seen them all.” Many political observers feel that Agnew’s heated rhetoric is the precursor to the wave of personal, negative attack politics practiced by the GOP in the decades to come. [New York Times, 9/19/1996; Time, 9/30/1996] Interestingly, while many Americans celebrate Agnew’s rhetoric, few want him as a successor to the presidency. One Baltimore bar patron says, “I don’t want the president of the United States to sound like I do after I’ve had a few beers.” [Economist, 9/28/1996]

Masthead of one of Ron Paul’s newsletters. [Source: Foundation for Rational Economics and Education]A number of newsletters released by Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), a self-described libertarian and strict Constitutionalist, contain what many believe to be racially objectionable remarks and claims. Paul’s monthly newsletters are published under a variety of names, including “Ron Paul’s Freedom Report,” “Ron Paul Political Report,” and “The Ron Paul Survival Report.” The newsletters are published by several organizations, including Paul’s non-profit group the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, and a group called Ron Paul & Associates. For a time, Ron Paul & Associates also publishes “The Ron Paul Investment Letter.” In 1996, a challenger for Paul’s House seat, Charles “Lefty” Morris (D-TX) makes public some of the racially inflammatory content in Paul’s newsletters. The newsletters will be publicly exposed in a 2008 article in the New Republic (see January 8-15, 2008). The content, culled from years of newsletters, includes such claims and observations as: From a 1992 newsletter: “[O]pinion polls consistently show only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.” Politically “sensible” blacks are outnumbered “as decent people.” The same report claims that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia have been arrested, and continues: “Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the ‘criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.… [W]e are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, [but] it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.” The same 1992 edition has Paul claiming that the government should lower the age at which accused juvenile criminals can be prosecuted as adults. “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23,” the newsletter states. “That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary, and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.” The newsletter also asserts that sophisticated crimes such as “complex embezzling” are conducted exclusively by non-blacks: “What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn’t that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?” Another 1992 newsletter states, “[I]f you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” An undated newsletter excerpt states that US Representative Barbara Jordan (D-TX), who is African-American, is “the archetypical half-educated victimologist” whose “race and sex protect her from criticism.” The newsletters often use disparaging nicknames and descriptions for lawmakers. Jordan is called “Barbara Morondon.” Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is a “black pinko.” Donna Shalala, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services during the Clinton administration, is a “short lesbian.” Ron Brown, the head of the Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration, is a “racial victimologist.” Roberta Achtenberg, the first openly gay public official confirmed by the US Senate, is a “far-left, normal-hating lesbian activist.” Newsletter items through the early 1990s attack Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., renaming him “X-Rated Martin Luther King” and labeling him a “world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours,” “seduced underage girls and boys,” and “made a pass at” fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridicules black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that “Welfaria,” “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,” and “Lazyopolis” were better alternatives. The same year, King is described as “a comsymp [Communist sympathizer], if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.” One 1990 excerpt says of the King holiday: “I voted against this outrage time and again as a congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day!” An undated excerpt from a newsletter entry titled “Needlin’” says: “‘Needlin’,’ a new form of racial terrorism, has struck New York City streets on the tony Upper West Side. At least 39 white women have been stuck with used hypodermic needles—perhaps infected with AIDS—by gangs of black girls between the ages of 12 and 14. The New York Times didn’t find this fit to print for weeks and weeks, until its candidate David Dinkins [New York City’s first African-American mayor] was safely elected. Even then the story was very low key, with race mentioned many paragraphs into it. Who can doubt that if this situation were reversed, if white girls had done this to black women, we would have been subjected to months-long nationwide propaganda campaign on the evils of white America? The double standard strikes again.” The excerpt is presumably published sometime after 1989, when Dinkins is elected mayor of New York City. In 2011, NewsOne reporter Casey Gane-McCalla will write, “I could find no evidence of this ‘epidemic’ and the article seems to have no point other than to make white people scared of black people.” A December 1989 “special issue” of the Investment Letter addresses what it calls “racial terrorism,” and tells readers what to expect from the 1990s: “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities” because “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” In February 1990, another newsletter warns of “The Coming Race War.” In November 1990, an item advises readers: “If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.” In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood is titled, “Animals Take Over the DC Zoo,” calling the disturbances “the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s.” In June 1992, the Ron Paul Political Report publishes a “special issue” that explains the Los Angeles riots, claiming, “Order was only restored in LA when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.” The looting, the newsletter writes, is a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with “‘civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black TV shows, black TV anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.” It also denounces “the media” for believing that “America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.” The newsletter praises Asian merchants in Los Angeles for having the fortitude to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans, the newsletter writes, are “the only people to act like real Americans” during the riots, “mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England.” Another newsletter entry from around the same time strikes some of the same chords in writing about riots in Chicago after the NBA’s Chicago Bulls win the championship: “[B]lacks poured into the streets in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot, even breaking through protective steel shutters with crowbars to steal everything in sight.” The entry goes on to claim that black rioters burned down buildings all along Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile,” destroyed two taxicabs, “shot or otherwise injured 95 police officers,” killed five people including a liquor-store owner, and injured over 100 others. “Police arrested more than 1,000 blacks,” the newsletter claims. In 2011, Gane-McCalla will write that the newsletter entry falsely accuses blacks of perpetuating all of the violence, when in reality, the violence was perpetuated by people of all ethnicities. One thousand people—not 1,000 blacks—were arrested. And, he will write, “two officers suffered minor gunshot wounds and that 95 were injured in total, but the way Paul phrased it, it would seem most of the 95 officers injured were shot.” An undated newsletter entry says that “black talk radio” features “racial hatred [that] makes a KKK rally look tame. The blacks talk about their own racial superiority, how the whites have a conspiracy to wipe them out, and how they are going to take over the country and wipe them out. They only differ over whether they should use King’s non-violent approach (i.e. state violence) or use private violence.” An undated newsletter entry discusses “the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family—carjacking,” blaming it on blacks who follow “the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos.” The entry advises potential carjacking victims to shoot carjackers, then “leave the scene immediately [and] dispos[e] of the wiped-off gun as soon as possible.” The entry concludes: “I frankly don’t know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self-defense. For the animals are coming.” [Houston Chronicle, 5/21/1996; New Republic, 1/8/2008; NewsOne, 5/6/2011]According to author and militia/white supremacist expert David Neiwert, much of Paul’s information about black crime comes from Jared Taylor, the leader of the American Renaissance movement (see January 23, 2005). Taylor, Neiwert will write, cloaks his racism in “pseudo-academic” terminology that is published both in a magazine, American Renaissance, and later in a book, The Color of Crime, both of which make what Neiwert calls “unsupportable claims about blacks.” [David Neiwert, 6/8/2007]Conspiracies, Right-Wing Militias, and Bigotry - The newsletters often contain speculations and assertions regarding a number of what reporter James Kirchick will call “shopworn conspiracies.” Paul, as reflected in his newsletter, distrusts the “industrial-banking-political elite” and does not recognize the federally regulated monetary system and its use of paper currency. The newsletters often refer to to the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1978, a newsletter blames David Rockefeller, the Trilateral Commission, and “fascist-oriented, international banking and business interests” for the Panama Canal Treaty, which it calls “one of the saddest events in the history of the United States.” A 1988 newsletter cites a doctor who believes that AIDS was created in a World Health Organization laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. In addition, Ron Paul & Associates sells a video about the Branch Davidian tragedy outside Waco (see April 19, 1993) produced by “patriotic Indiana lawyer Linda Thompson” (see April 3, 1993 and September 19, 1994), as a newsletter calls her, who insists that Waco was a conspiracy to kill ATF agents who had previously worked for President Clinton as bodyguards. Kirchick will note that outside of the newsletters, Paul is a frequent guest on radio shows hosted by Alex Jones, whom Kirchick will call “perhaps the most famous conspiracy theorist in America.” Connections to Neo-Confederate Institute - Kirchick goes on to note Paul’s deep ties with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Alabama founded by Paul’s former chief of staff, Lew Rockwell; Paul has taught seminars at the institute, serves as a “distinguished counselor,” and has published books through the institute. The von Mises Institute has a long history of support for white-supremacist neo-Confederate groups, including the League of the South, led by Confederate apologist Thomas Woods (see October 14, 2010). Paul will endorse books by Woods and other neo-Confederates. Paul seems to agree with members of the von Mises institute in their view that the Civil War was the beginning of a horrific federal tyranny that ran roughshod over states’ rights. Paul, in his newsletters and speeches, has frequently espoused the idea of states’ secession as protest against the federal government. Lamenting the South African Revolution - In March 1994, a newsletter warns of a “South African Holocaust,” presumably against white South Africans, once President Nelson Mandela takes office. Previous newsletters call the transition from a whites-only government to a majority-African government a “destruction of civilization” that is “the most tragic [to] ever occur on that continent, at least below the Sahara.” Praise for Ku Klux Klan Leader's Political Aspirations - In 1990, a newsletter item praises Louisiana’s David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, for coming in a strong second in that state’s Republican Senate primary. “Duke lost the election,” the newsletter says, “but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment.” In 1991, a newsletter asks, “Is David Duke’s new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?” The conclusion is that “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.” Duke will in return give support to Paul’s 2008 presidential candidacy. Attacking Gays, AIDS Research - Paul’s newsletters often praise Paul’s “old colleague,” Representative William Dannemeyer (R-CA), a noted anti-gay activist who often advocates forcibly quarantining people suffering from AIDS. Paul’s newsletters praise Dannemeyer for “speak[ing] out fearlessly despite the organized power of the gay lobby.” In 1990, one newsletter mentions a reporter from a gay magazine “who certainly had an axe to grind, and that’s not easy with a limp wrist.” In an item titled, “The Pink House?” the newsletter complains about President George H.W. Bush’s decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite “the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony,” adding, “I miss the closet.” The same article states, “Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.” If homosexuals are ever allowed to openly serve in the military, another newsletter item concludes, they, “if admitted, should be put in a special category and not allowed in close physical contact with heterosexuals.” One newsletter calls AIDS “a politically protected disease thanks to payola and the influence of the homosexual lobby,” and alternates between praising anti-gay rhetoric and accusing gays of using the disease to further their own political agenda. One item tells readers not to get blood transfusions because gays are trying to “poison the blood supply.” Another cites a far-right Christian publication that advocates not allowing “the AIDS patient” to eat in restaurants, and echoes the false claim that “AIDS can be transmitted by saliva.” The newsletters often advertise a book, Surviving the AIDS Plague, which makes a number of false claims about casual transmission and defends “parents who worry about sending their healthy kids to school with AIDS victims.” Blasting Israel - Kirchick will note that the newsletters are relentless in their attacks on Israel. A 1987 issue of the Investment Letter calls Israel “an aggressive, national socialist state.” A 1990 newsletter cites the “tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise.” Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see February 26, 1993), a newsletter said, “Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little.” Another newsletter column criticizing lobbyists says, “By far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort is the Israeli government” and that the goal of the “Zionist movement” is to stifle criticism. Violent Anti-Government Rhetoric - In January 1995, three months before the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), a newsletter lists “Ten Militia Commandments,” describing “the 1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty” as “one of the most encouraging developments in America.” It warns militia members that they are “possibly under BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] or other totalitarian federal surveillance” and prints bits of advice from the Sons of Liberty, an anti-government militia based in Alabama—among them, “You can’t kill a Hydra by cutting off its head,” “Keep the group size down,” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” Slandering Clinton - Newsletters printed during President Clinton’s terms in office claim that Clinton uses cocaine and has fathered illegitimate children. Repeating the rumor that Clinton is a longtime cocaine user, in 1994 Paul writes that the speculation “would explain certain mysteries” about the president’s scratchy voice and insomnia. “None of this is conclusive, of course, but it sure is interesting,” he states. Distance from Newsletter - In 2008, Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton will attempt to distance Paul from the newsletters, saying that while Paul wrote some of their content, he often did not, and in many instances never saw the content. Benton will say that the frequent insults and vitriol directed at King are particularly surprising, because, Benton will say, “Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero.” In 1996, Paul claims ownership of the content, but says that Morris took the newsletter quotes “out of context” (see May 22 - October 11, 1996). In 2001, Paul will claim that he did not write any of the passages, and will claim having no knowledge of them whatsoever (see October 1, 2001). Most of the newsletters’ articles and columns contain no byline, and the Internet archives of the newsletters begin in 1999. In 2008, Kirchick will find many of the older newsletters on file at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Kirchick will note the lack of bylines, and the general use of the first person in the material, “implying that Paul was the author.” Kirchick will conclude: “[W]hoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him—and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays.” Paul, Kirchick writes, is “a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.” Kirchick will conclude: “Paul’s campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naive, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically—or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point—over the course of decades—he would have done something about it.” [New Republic, 1/8/2008; NewsOne, 5/6/2011] In 2008, Paul will deny writing virtually any of his newsletters’ various content (see January 8-15, 2008 and January 16, 2008).

The masthead of the Dartmouth Review (2005). [Source: Huffington Post]The Dartmouth Review, an alternative campus newspaper with a conservative slant, is founded by Greg Fossedal, the former editor of Dartmouth College’s official student newspaper, The Dartmouth. Fossedal feels that the Dartmouth administration is composed of “Stalinists” who oppose his views. Taking several staffers with him, Fossedal leaves The Dartmouth and founds the Dartmouth Review. The newspaper, which receives no university funding, quickly demands that the university purge most non-Western curriculum materials and coursework, takes a strong stance against affirmative action (claiming that the “administration has given in to every minority demand”), complains that professors are unfairly punishing students who express pro-American and pro-Christian viewpoints, and demands a return to “traditional values.” Early issues feature an article calling for the return of the old Dartmouth Indian symbol, and calling modern Native Americans “drunken, ignorant, and culturally lost”; an interview with a former Ku Klux Klan leader, illustrated with a staged photo of a black person lynched from a tree; and an open letter on parents’ weekend that says affirmative action at Dartmouth “explains your son’s stupid friends.” Before long, the Review begins receiving funding from conservative organizations and individuals, beginning with conservative alumni, and eventually receives funding from around the country as part of a program by the right-wing Institute for Educational Affairs to develop conservative publications on college campuses. Early support comes from former Reagan White House staffer Morton Blackwell, whose Leadership Institute will later recruit Review editors to train campus conservatives starting up their own newspapers (including Ann Coulter, who will start a similar publication, the Cornell Review, at Cornell University.) According to a 2006 article by the Dartmouth Free Press, “[t]he Dartmouth Review probably could not have survived without the national publicity it received by claiming Dartmouth was trying to silence its conservative voice.” The Review quickly gains a reputation for racism (see March 15, 1982, 1983, and August 2002), anti-Semitism (see October 1982, November 9-10, 1988, and October 4, 1990), homophobia (see 1981, 1984, and 1985), and personal innuendos, such as when it calls one visiting pro-choice speaker “allegedly syphilitic.” Relations between the Review and campus administrators sour even further as time goes on. [Nation, 2/17/2003; Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006; AlterNet (.org), 1/15/2010]

Lee Atwater. [Source: NNDB (.com)]Republican political strategist Lee Atwater, in a discussion with political science professor Alexander Lamis, discusses the Republican strategy of using racism to win elections. Lamis will later quote Atwater in his book Southern Politics in the 1990s. Atwater takes Lamis through the evolution of Republican appeals to racism: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N_gger, n_gger, n_gger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n_gger’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N_gger, n_gger.’” Atwater will go on to manage the 1988 presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush, where he will oversee the use of what is considered one of the most overtly racist campaign ads in modern history, the “Willie Horton” ad (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). [New York Times, 10/6/2005]

The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), runs an article opposing affirmative action that many feel is blatantly racist. The article is titled “Dis Sho’ Ain’t No Jive, Bro,” written by former Review chairman Keeney Jones. The article is the third in a series of attacks on affirmative action by Jones; the earlier articles featured Jones wishing he could medically darken his skin so he could get into medical school, and his claim that he was taking speech lessons to learn how to speak “black.” This article is written entirely in Jones’s version of “black dialect,” and features the following selection: “Dese boys be sayin’ dat we be comin’ to Dartmut’and not takin’ the classics. You know, Homa, Shakesphere; but I hes’ dey all be co’d in da gound, six feet unda, and whatcha be askin’ us to learn from dem? We culturally ‘lightened, too. We be takin’ hard courses in many subjects, like Afro-Am studies, women’s studies, and policy studies. And who be mouthin’ ‘bout us not bein’ good road? I be practicly knowin’ ‘Roots’ cova to cova, ‘til my mine be boogying to da words! And I be watchin’ the Jeffersons on TV ‘til I be blue in da face.” Upon receiving the article, Review board member Jack Kemp (R-NY), a Republican congressman, resigns from the board, saying Kenney’s article “relied on racial stereotypes” and undoubtedly offended many readers. “I am even more concerned that others found in it some support for racist viewpoints,” Kemp continues, and concludes: “I do not want my name to appear in your paper. I am concerned that the association of my name with the Dartmouth Review is interpreted as an endorsement and I emphatically do not endorse the kind of antics displayed in your article.” The Review appears unmoved by Kemp’s resignation, with editors saying they hope to replace him with televangelist Jerry Falwell. Editor Dinesh D’Souza says the paper bears no responsibility for any allegations of racism, and tells a New Hampshire reporter, “It is not the Dartmouth Review but the Afro-American Society which is the primary cause of racial tension on campus.” The undergraduate council and the faculty later votes to condemn the Review for creating a racially divisive atmosphere; Dartmouth’s president will write a letter saying the Review performs “offensive practices,” but that the issue cannot be solved by “violence or intolerance.” [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006]

The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), publishes a front-page story proclaiming an “Exclusive Report on the GSA,” the Gay Straight Alliance. In 1981, Review editors had published the names of GSA officers, many of whom wished to keep their homosexuality a secret (see 1981). This article features a transcript of a private GSA meeting, recorded by Review staffer Teresa Polenz, who was sent by Review editor Laura Ingraham. The accompanying illustration depicts a man peering over a bathroom stall; Ingraham’s accompanying prose calls the GSA “cheerleaders for latent campus sodomites.” The state of New Hampshire opens an investigation into whether Polenz had violated wiretapping laws, an investigation that is later dropped when the New Hampshire Supreme Court hands down a ruling in an unrelated wiretapping case. Dartmouth College chooses not to discipline any students, and merely issues a request that the Dartmouth community “censure” the Review for its “insensitivity.” The Review will display little sensitivity towards gays, often referring to them as “sodomites.” In 1997, Ingraham, who has become a prominent conservative talk radio host and pundit, will write an article for the Washington Post recanting her views on homosexuals, saying she changed her mind in light of her brother revealing himself as gay (see April 1997). In 2006, former Review editor and conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza will say that while the Review was never racist (see March 15, 1982 and 1983) or anti-Semitic (see October 1982, November 9-10, 1988, and October 4, 1990), it could at times edge towards espousing homophobia: “[T]his antigay thing is a little bit tricky,” D’Souza will say, and add that the Review sometimes published comments about gays he wishes it had not. However, he will say, “It’s not clear the Review’s target was homosexuals per se.” [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006; Huffington Post, 6/9/2008]

The Bush presidential re-election campaign, trailing Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, in the polls, decides on a “two-track” campaign strategy. The strategy is crafted by campaign manager Lee Atwater. The “high road” track will be taken by President Bush and the campaign directly, attacking Dukakis’s record on law enforcement and challenging his reputation as having led Massachusetts into a period of economic growth (the so-called “Massachusetts Miracle”). The “low road,” designed by Atwater to appeal to the most crude racial stereotypes (see 1981), is to be taken by ostensibly “independent” voter outreach organizations. Because of a loophole in campaign finance rules, the Bush campaign could work closely with “outside groups” and funnel money from “independent” organizations to the outside groups, while denying any connections with those groups were they to run objectionable or negative political ads. Atwater wants to avoid a potential backlash among voters, who may turn against the campaign because of their antipathy towards “attack politics.” Atwater and his colleagues determine that the outside groups will use “brass knuckle” tactics to attack Dukakis, and because the ads come from these “independent” organizations, the Bush campaign can distance itself from the groups and even criticize them for being too negative. In 1999, InsidePolitics.org will write: “In so doing, Bush’s presidential effort would train a generation of campaign operatives how to run a negative campaign. Its ‘two-track’ approach would become a model of how to exploit campaign finance laws and use outside groups to deliver hard-hitting messages on behalf of the candidate. Over the course of the following decade, this strategy would become commonplace in American elections.” The idea of “outsourcing” attack ads had been popularized by the 1980 Reagan presidential campaign, which used what it called “independent expenditures” to finance “outside” attacks on its Democratic opponent, President Jimmy Carter. In 1988, “independent” conservative groups spend $13.7 million on the Bush campaign, most of which goes towards attacks on Dukakis. In comparison, progressive and liberal groups spend $2.8 million on behalf of Dukakis—an almost five-to-one discrepancy. Most of the outside money is spent on television advertising. InsidePolitics will write, “Increasingly, candidates were discovering, electoral agendas and voter impressions could be dominated through a clever combination of attack ads and favorable news coverage.” [Inside Politics (.org), 1999] The result of Atwater’s “two-track” strategy is the “Willie Horton” ad, which will become infamous both for its bluntly racist appeal and its effectiveness (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). An earlier “independent” ad attacking Dukakis’s environmental record provides something of a template for the Horton ad campaign. The so-called “Boston Harbor” ad, which depicted garbage floating in the body of water, challenged Dukakis’s positive reputation as a pro-environmental candndate. The ad helped bring Dukakis’s “positives” down, a strong plus for Bush, whose record as an oil-company executive and reputation as a powerful political friend to the oil companies hurts him in comparison with Dukakis. In July 1988, Readers Digest, a magazine known for its quietly conservative slant, publishes a profile of Horton titled “Getting Away With Murder.” The Bush campaign reprints the article and distributes it by the tens of thousands around the country. [Regardie's Magazine, 10/1/1990; Inside Politics (.org), 1999]

The image of Willie Horton as shown in the ‘Weekend Pass’ campaign ad. [Source: University of Virginia]A political advertisement on behalf of the George H. W. Bush presidential campaign appears, running on televisions around the country between September 21 and October 4, 1988. Called “Weekend Pass,” it depicts convicted murderer William “Willie” Horton, who was granted 10 separate furloughs from prison, and used the time from his last furlough to kidnap and rape a young woman. The advertisement and subsequent media barrage falsely accuses Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, of creating the “furlough program” that led to Horton’s release, and paints Dukakis as “soft on crime.” It will come to be known as one of the most overly racist political advertisements in the history of modern US presidential politics. Ad Content - The ad begins by comparing the positions of the two candidates on crime. It notes that Bush supports the death penalty for convicted murderers, whereas Dukakis does not. The ad’s voiceover narrator then states, “Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison,” with the accompanying text “Opposes Death Penalty, Allowed Murderers to Have Weekend Passes” superimposed on a photograph of Dukakis. The narrator then says, “One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times,” accompanied by a mug shot of Horton. The voiceover continues: “Despite a life sentence, Horton received 10 weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man and repeatedly raping his girlfriend.” At this point, the ad shows another picture of Horton being arrested while the accompanying text reads, “Kidnapping, Stabbing, Raping.” The ad’s narration concludes: “Weekend prison passes. Dukakis on crime.” The ad is credited to the “National Security Political Action Committee.” [Inside Politics (.org), 1999; Museum of the Moving Image, 2008; University of Virginia, Introduction to American Politics, 11/18/2009]'Soft on Crime' - The ad is a reflection of the measures the Bush campaign is willing to undertake to defeat the apparently strong Dukakis candidacy. Dukakis is a popular Democratic governor and widely credited with what pundits call the “Massachusetts Miracle,” reversing the downward economic spiral in his state without resorting to hefty tax increases. At the time of the ad, Dukakis enjoys a 17-point lead over Bush in the polls. Bush campaign strategists, led by campaign manager Lee Atwater, have learned from focus groups that conservative Democratic voters, which some call “Reagan Democrats,” are not solid in their support of Dukakis, and are swayed by reports that he vetoed legislation requiring teachers to say the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day. They also react negatively when they learn that during Dukakis’s tenure as governor, Horton had been furloughed and subsequently raped a white woman. Atwater and the Bush campaign decide that Dukakis can successfully be attacked as a “liberal” who is “not patriotic” and is “soft on crime.” Atwater, who has a strong record of appealing to racism in key voting groups (see 1981), tells Republican Party officials, “By the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name.” Although Dukakis had vetoed a bill mandating the death penalty for first-degree murder in Massachusetts, he did not institute the furlough program; that was signed into law by Republican governor Francis Sargent in 1972. The ads and the accompanying media blitz successfully avoid telling voters that Sargent, not Dukakis, instituted the furlough program. [Regardie's Magazine, 10/1/1990; Inside Politics (.org), 1999]Running the Horton Ad - The ad is sponsored by an ostensibly “independent” political organization, the conservative National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC), headed by former Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Thomas Moorer. NSPAC’s daughter organization “Americans for Bush” actually put together the ad, created by marketer Larry McCarthy in close conjunction with Atwater and other Bush campaign aides; Atwater determined months before that the Horton ad should not come directly from the Bush campaign, but from an “independent” group supporting Bush, thus giving the Bush campaign the opportunity to distance itself from the ad, and even criticize it, should voters react negatively towards its message (see June-September 1988). The first version of the ad does not use the menacing mug shot of Horton, which McCarthy later says depicts “every suburban mother’s greatest fear.” McCarthy and Atwater feared that the networks would refuse to run the ad if it appeared controversial. However, the network censors do not object, so McCarthy quickly substitutes a second version of the ad featuring the mug shot. When Democrats and progressive critics of the Bush campaign complain that Bush is running a racist ad, Bush media adviser Roger Ailes says that neither he nor the campaign have any control over what outside groups like “Americans for Bush” put on the airwaves. InsidePolitics will later write, “This gave the Bush camp plausible deniability that helped its candidate avoid public condemnation for racist campaigning.” Accompanying Newspaper Reports, Bush Campaign Ads - The ad airs for the first time on September 21. On September 22, newspapers around the nation begin publishing articles telling the story of Angie and Clifford Barnes, victimized by Horton while on furlouogh. On October 5, the Bush campaign releases a “sister” television ad, called “Revolving Door.” Scripted by Ailes, the commercial does not mention Horton nor does it show the now-infamous mug shot, but emphasizes the contention that Dukakis is “soft on crime” and has what it calls a “lenient” furlough policy for violent convicts. The central image of the ad is a stream of African-American inmates moving slowly in and out of a revolving gate. The voiceover says that Dukakis had vetoed the death penalty and given furloughs to “first-degree murderers not eligible for parole. While out, many committed other crimes like kidnapping and rape.” At the same time, Clifford Barnes and the sister of the youth murdered by Horton embark on a nationwide speaking tour funded by a pro-Bush independent group known as the Committee for the Presidency. Barnes also appears on a number of television talk shows, including those hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera. Barnes and the victim’s sister also appear in two “victim” ads, where Barnes says: “Mike Dukakis and Willie Horton changed our lives forever.… We are worried people don’t know enough about Mike Dukakis.” In 1999, InsidePolitics will write that the media gives the “Revolving Door” ad a “courteous reception,” and focuses more on the two ads’ impact on the election, and the Dukakis campaign’s lack of response, instead of discussing the issues of race and crime as portrayed by the ads. It is not until October 24, less than two weeks before the election, that anyone in the mainstream media airs footage of critics questioning whether the ads are racially inflammatory, but these appearances are few and far between, and are always balanced with appearances by Bush supporters praising the campaign’s media strategy. [Inside Politics (.org), 1999; Inside Politics (.org), 1999; University of Virginia, Introduction to American Politics, 11/18/2009]Denials - Bush and his vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle will deny that the ads are racist, and will accuse Democrats of trying to use racism to stir up controversy (see October 1988). Failure to Respond - The Dukakis campaign will make what many political observers later characterize as a major political blunder: it refuses to answer the ads or dispute their content until almost the last days of the campaign, hoping that viewers would instead conclude that the ads are unfair without the Dukakis campaign’s involvement. The ads will be hugely successful in securing the election for Bush (see September-November 1988). [Museum of the Moving Image, 2008]

The “Willie Horton” ad campaign, a pair of ads launched by an “independent” organization on behalf of the Bush re-election campaign and by the Bush campaign itself (see June-September 1988 and September 21 - October 4, 1988), is considered an immediate success by veteran political observers, in spite of what many call its overtly racist appeal. Because the first ad, “Weekend Pass,” was the product of an ostensibly independent organization, the Bush campaign is able to keep a distance between itself and the ad. In the last weeks of the campaign, some polls show that voters blame President Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis almost equally for the negative tone of the campaign. While the ads only ran a relatively small number of times, news networks run the ads repeatedly, often adding their own analysis while the images of the ads run in the background. According to InsidePolitics, only once does any journalist challenge the “deceptive information from Bush’s crime ads.… By amplifying Bush’s claims, news reporters gave the ads even greater legitimacy than otherwise would have appeared. News accounts quoted election experts who noted that Bush’s tactics were effective and that Dukakis’ failure to respond was disastrous. Because these assessments appeared in the high credibility framework of news broadcasts, they came across as more believable than had they been aired only as paid advertisements.” The “Weekend Pass” and “Revolving Door” ads have a palpable effect on the electorate, energizing voters who cite “law and order” as one of their major concerns for the nation, and driving many of them towards voting for Bush. Less discussed but equally powerful is the racial effect of the ads. Polls show that many white voters feel fearful because of the ads, and feel that Bush, not Dukakis, will make them safer from crime. InsidePolitics notes that the Bush campaign “had picked the perfect racial crime, that of a black felon raping a white woman.” Later research will show that many viewers saw the Horton case as more about race than crime; many subjects exposed to news broadcasts about the Horton case responded in racial terms, with studies finding that the ads “mobilized whites’ racial prejudice, not their worries about crime.” InsidePolitics will write: “Viewers became much more likely to feel negatively about blacks in general after having heard the details of the case. It was an attack strategy that worked well on several different levels for Republicans.” [Inside Politics (.org), 1999; University of Virginia, Introduction to American Politics, 11/18/2009] After the election, a New York Times voter poll will rate the “Revolving Door” ad as the single most influential ad of the campaign. The ad was particularly effective among white women, many of whom said that after watching it during the campaign, they began to view Bush as “stronger on crime” and as the candidate who would keep them “safer.” In 1999, InsidePolitics will write that voters often conflated the two ads, and it is unclear from poll responses whether they differentiated between the independently produced ad and the Bush campaign ad. InsidePolitics also notes the powerful impact of the Horton ad’s clear reference to rape. Dukakis’s campaign manager Susan Estrich will say: “The symbolism was very powerful… you can’t find a stronger metaphor, intended or not, for racial hatred in this country than a black man raping a white woman.… I talked to people afterward.… Women said they couldn’t help it, but it scared the living daylights out of them.” [Inside Politics (.org), 1999]

The “Willie Horton” (a.k.a. “Weekend Pass”) campaign ad, produced by an “independent” political organization on behalf of the Bush re-election campaign (see June-September 1988 and September 21 - October 4, 1988), and the Bush campaign’s accompanying ad, “Revolving Door,” draw accusations from the Democratic challenger, Michael Dukakis, that they are racist in their appeals. President Bush denies the accusations that race has anything to do with the ads, or even that racism exists. He calls the Dukakis accusations “some desperation kind of move,” and says: “There isn’t any racism. It’s absolutely ridiculous.” Dukakis is leveling these accusations, Bush says, because he “is weak on crime and defense and that’s the inescapable truth.” Bush accuses Dukakis of lying about his record, and accuses the Democrat of both racist and sexist behavior, though he gives no details or evidence. Bush’s vice-presidential candidate, Dan Quayle, agrees, and accuses the Dukakis campaign of behaving in a racist manner, saying: “It’s totally absurd and ridiculous. I think it shows just how desperate they really are, to start fanning the flames of racism in this country.” Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has accused the Bush campaign of trying to incite racial fears through the Horton ad, and Dukakis’s vice-presidential candidate, Lloyd Bentsen, says there seems to be “a racial element” in the Bush campaign’s strategy. In contrast to Bush’s denials, Bush media adviser Roger Ailes jokes with reporters about the ads, saying that the campaign’s only question about the Horton ad was whether to portray Horton “with a knife in his hand or without it,” and accuses Dukakis’s campaign of spreading racism about Hispanics in its own ads. Bush states that he is “fully behind” both the “Weekend Pass” and “Revolving Door” ads. [New York Times, 10/25/1988]

Two Democratic organizations in Ohio file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in the matter of the now-infamous “Willie Horton” ads used to great effect by the Bush re-election campaign (see June-September 1988 and September 21 - October 4, 1988). The complaint alleges that the ostensibly independent political organization that created and financed the first ad, the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC), violated the law on independent expenditures (see May 1990 and After). The complaint uncovers numerous connections between NSPAC and the Bush campaign. However, the FEC refuses to charge the Bush campaign with campaign finance violations. [Inside Politics (.org), 1999]

African-American writer Anthony Walton writes for the New York Times Magazine his thoughts on the overtly racist “Willie Horton” ad campaign launched the year before by the Bush re-election campaign (see June-September 1988 and September 21 - October 4, 1988). Walton writes: “George Bush and his henchmen could not have invented Willie Horton. Horton, with his coal-black skin; huge, unkempt Afro, and a glare that would have given Bull Connor or Lester Maddox [infamous white supremacists who abused African-Americans in the 1950s and ‘60s] serious pause, had committed a brutal murder in 1974 and been sentenced to life in prison. Then, granted a weekend furlough from prison, had viciously raped a white woman in front of her fiance, who was also attacked. Willie Horton was the perfect symbol of what happened to innocent whites when liberals (read Democrats) were on the watch, at least in the gospel according to post-Goldwater Republicans. Horton himself, in just a fuzzy mug shot, gave even the stoutest, most open, liberal heart a shiver. Even me. I thought of all the late nights I had ridden in terror on the F and A trains, while living in New York City. I thought Willie Horton must be what the wolf packs I had often heard about, but never seen, must look like. I said to myself, ‘Something has got to be done about these n_ggers.’” Walton recounts several instances where he himself has been the victim of racism, and notes that in many eyes, he and Horton are interchangeable: “If Willie Horton would become just a little middle-class, he would look like me.… [I]n retrospect, I can see that racism has always been with me, even when I was shielded by love or money, or when I chose not to see it. But I saw it in the face of Willie Horton, and I can’t ignore it, because it is my face.” [New York Times Magazine, 8/20/1989]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh admits to a Newsday reporter that he made two racially inflammatory remarks during his earlier radio days. He admits to telling a black caller, while doing a music radio show in Philadelphia in the early 1970s, to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” He also admits to making a much more recent statement on his current broadcast, telling his listeners, “Have you ever noticed that all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble [black civil rights leader] Jesse Jackson?” Limbaugh tells the reporter that it would be wrong to conclude that he is racist because of those remarks, says he is “the least racist host you’ll ever find,” and says he feels guilty about the “bone in the nose” comment. [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 10/7/2009; Snopes (.com), 10/13/2009]

The Ohio Democratic party and a group called Black Elected Democrats of Ohio file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over the infamous “Willie Horton” campaign ad of 1988 (see September 21 - October 4, 1988), claiming that the “outside” organization that released the ad, the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC), violated the law on independent expenditures, and that NSPAC functioned as an arm of the 1988 Bush presidential campaign. According to the complaint, it was legal for NSPAC to expend funds criticizing Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and supporting President Bush’s election only if the expenditures were independent and uncoordinated between the two organizations. Any spending that was made “in cooperation, consultation, or concert, with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, his authorized political committees, or their agents,” represented an illegal “in-kind contribution” in excess of federal contribution limits. The FEC conducts an investigation into the relationship between NSPAC and the Bush campaign. The investigation uncovers several ties between the two organizations. For example, Larry McCarthy, the NSPAC media consultant who, as a top marketing expert for the NSPAC’s “Americans for Bush” organization, created the Horton ad, worked for top Bush campaign adviser Roger Ailes; McCarthy was a former senior vice president of Ailes Communications, Inc. (ACI), which functioned as the main media consulting firm for the Bush campaign. McCarthy tells investigators he worked at ACI until January 1987, but continued to work with ACI on “a contractual basis” until December 1987, when he began working as Senator Robert Dole (R-KS)‘s media consultant. McCarthy admits to having a number of contacts with Ailes during the Bush-Dukakis campaign, but says some of them were “of a passing social nature,” such as “running into one another in restaurants or at airports.” He denies discussing “anything relative to the Bush presidential campaign, NSPAC, or political matters.” McCarthy’s story is contradicted by Ailes, who tells the FEC that he had talked to McCarthy twice about opportunities to work for the Bush campaign, opportunities Ailes says McCarthy lost by working for NSPAC. The FEC also discovers that another former ACI employee, Jesse Raiford of Raiford Communications, worked on the Horton ad, and while doing so “simultaneously received compensation from NSPAC and the Bush campaign.” Raiford also “expended NSPAC funds for the production of the Willie Horton ad.” Though there is clear evidence of illegal connections and complicity between the Bush campaign and NSPAC, the FEC’s Board of Commissioners deadlock 3-3 on voting whether to bring formal charges against the two organizations. The swing vote, commissioner Thomas Josefiak, says the explanations from Ailes and McCarthy about their lack of substantive contacts during the campaign “were plausible and reasonably consistent.” Josefiak says both were guilty of “bad judgment” and may have acted “foolish[ly],” but did nothing warranting legal action. The FEC also determines that Raiford only “performed technical tasks” for the two organizations, “and played no role in any substantive or strategic decisions made by either organization.” The commissioners conclude that neither organization violated campaign finance law. [Inside Politics (.org), 1999]

GOPAC logo. [Source: Mullings (.com)]A New York Times editorial derides a recent effort by a conservative political action committee to label political opponents with slanderous epithets. According to the editorial, GOPAC, the GOP Political Action Committee chaired by Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA), has issued a glossary mailed to Republican state legislative candidates urging them to use the following words to characterize their Democratic opponents: “sick,” “traitors,” “bizarre,” “self-serving,” “shallow,” “corrupt,” “pathetic,” and “shame.” GOPAC later “regretted” including the word “traitors” in that list of characterizations, the editorial reports, but has continued to back the use of the other epithets. The glossary is part of a pamphlet entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” and features a letter from Gingrich advising the candidates to step up the personal invective against their opponents because, he writes, vilification works. The Times writes: “Mr. Gingrich’s injunction represents the worst of American political discourse, which reached a low during the dispiriting presidential campaign of 1988 (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). Then, more than ever before, negative argument displaced reasoned discussion about how a nation might best be governed. The sound bite reigned. Attack commercials flourished. The signs this year aren’t any better. Evidence that negative campaigning can come back to sink the sender has had little impact. The races for governor in California and Texas have already seen the same slash and burn. No doubt the proceedings will grow more rabid still as November nears. Negative discourse serves democracy poorly. The temptation to avoid serious debate is already great. It increases as the stakes soar and slander becomes a rewarding, easy option. The issues of the day go untended. The whole affair takes on the character of the gladiator’s art. The GOPAC glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence—the Republican whip in the House—and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document. The nakedness of the GOPAC offering also makes it useful. There must be limits to the negative politics that voters will bear; the bald appeal to invective will certainly probe those limits. For now, it should be said that some adjectives in the glossary aptly describe the glossary itself: shallow, sensationalist, and, yes, shame(ful).” [New York Times, 9/20/1990; Propaganda Critic, 9/29/2002; Propaganda Critic, 9/29/2002] Later in the year, the pamphlet will win the Doublespeak Award from the National Conference of Teachers of English. [Propaganda Critic, 9/29/2002] Gingrich and GOPAC will expand upon the original pamphlet in 1995, after Gingrich becomes speaker of the House (see 1995).

Radio personality Rush Limbaugh hosts his own late-night television show; Roger Ailes, the Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988), is his executive producer. On this show, Limbaugh gives his response to African-American filmmaker Spike Lee’s recommendation that African-American children be allowed to skip school to watch his biographical docudrama Malcolm X: “Spike, if you’re going to do that, let’s complete the education experience. You should tell them that they should loot the theater and then blow it up on their way out.” [Media Matters, 10/27/2009] Ailes will go on to found Fox News (see October 7, 1996).

Radio personality Rush Limbaugh hosts his own late-night television show; Roger Ailes, the Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988), is Limbaugh’s executive producer. On this show, Limbaugh notes a recent comment of Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC), who told a gay solder that his lifestyle was “not normal” and advised the soldier to get psychiatric help. Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948 on an explicitly racist, segregationist third-party platform and who led the “Dixiecrat” exodus of Southern racists out of the Democratic Party (see March 12, 1956 and After), is praised by Limbaugh. The commentator says of Thurmond: “He is not encumbered by trying to be politically correct. He’s not encumbered by all of the—the so-called new niceties and proprieties. He just says it, and if you want to know what America used to be—and a lot of people wish it still were—then you listen to Strom Thurmond.… He got a standing ovation. Now people—people applauded that. People applaud—because—you know, Strom Thurmond can say it because he’s 90 years old and people say: ‘Ah, he’s just an old coot. He’s from the old days,’ and so forth. But that’s what most people think. They just don’t have the guts to say it. That’s why they applaud when somebody does say it that directly and that simply.” [Media Matters, 10/27/2009] Ailes will go on to found Fox News (see October 7, 1996).

Sam Francis. [Source: American Renaissance]Sam Francis, a senior columnist and writer for the conservative Washington Times, is fired after suggesting that white Americans must reassert what he believes is their innate dominance over other races. At the 1995 American Renaissance conference, hosted by the white supremacist organization of the same name, Francis tells his audience: “[Whites] must reassert our identity and our solidarity, and we must do so in explicitly racial terms through the articulation of a racial consciousness as whites. The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.” [Nation, 6/10/1996; Washington Times, 2/17/2005; National Council of La Raza, 2010 ] Francis’s last column for the Times also contributed to his dismissal. On July 27, 1995, he wrote, in part: “If the sin is hatred or exploitation, they [Southern Baptists repenting their support of slavery in the mid-1800s] may be on solid grounds, but neither ‘slavery’ nor ‘racism’ as an institution is a sin. Indeed, there are at least five clear passages in the letters of Paul that explicitly enjoin ‘servants’ to obey their masters, and the Greek words for ‘servants’ in the original text are identical to those for ‘slaves.’ Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the early church condemned slavery, despite countless opportunities to do so, and there is no indication that slavery is contrary to Christian ethics or that any serious theologian before modern times ever thought it was. Not until the Enlightenment of the 18th century did a bastardized version of Christian ethics condemn slavery. Today we know that version under the label of ‘liberalism,’ or its more extreme cousin, communism.… What has happened in the centuries since the Enlightenment is the permeation of the pseudo-Christian poison of equality into the tissues of the West, to the point that the mainstream churches now spend more time preaching against apartheid and colonialism than they do against real sins like pinching secretaries and pilfering from the office coffee pool. The Southern Baptists, because they were fortunate enough to flourish in a region where the false sun of the Enlightenment never shone, succeeded in escaping this grim fate, at least until last week.” [Media Matters, 12/13/2004]

Fox News logo. [Source: Fox News]Fox News begins broadcasting on US cable television. Fox News provides 24-hour news programming alongside the nation’s only other such cable news provider, CNN. Fox executive Roger Ailes, a former campaign adviser for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988), envisions Fox News as a conservative “antidote” to what he calls the “liberal bias” of the rest of American news broadcasting. Ailes uses many of the methodologies and characteristics of conservative talk radio, and brings several radio hosts on his channel, including Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, to host television shows. [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 47; New York Magazine, 5/22/2011] Referring to Ailes’s campaign experience, veteran Republican consultant Ed Rollins later says: “Because of his political work, he understood there was an audience. He knew there were a couple million conservatives who were a potential audience, and he built Fox to reach them.” [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011]Ailes Planned for Fox News as Far Back as 1970 - Ailes began envisioning a conservative news provider to counter what he considers the mainstream media’s “liberal bias” as early as 1970, when he became heavily involved with a Nixon administration plan to plant conservative propaganda in news outlets across the nation (see Summer 1970). In 1971, he headed a short-lived private conservative television news network, Television News Incorporated (TVN—see 1971-1975), which foundered in 1975 in part because of its reporters and staffers balking at reporting Ailes-crafted propaganda instead of “straight” news. Ailes told a New York Times reporter in 1991 that he was leaving politics, saying: “I’ve been in politics for 25 years. It’s always been a detour. Now my business has taken a turn back to my entertainment and corporate clients.” But Ailes misinformed the reporter. He continued to work behind the scenes on the 1992 Bush re-election campaign, providing the campaign with attack points against Democratic contender Bill Clinton (D-AR) and earning the nickname “Deep Throat” from Bush aides. Though Ailes did do work in entertainment, helping develop tabloid television programs such as The Maury Povich Show and heading the cable business news network CNBC for three years, Ailes has continued to stay heavily involved in Republican politics ever since. Ailes became involved in the creation of Fox News in early 1996 after he left NBC, which had canceled his show America’s Talking and launched a new cable news network, MSNBC, without asking for Ailes’s involvement. Fox News is owned by News Corporation (sometimes abbreviated NewsCorp), an international media conglomerate owned by conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch. When NBC allowed Ailes to leave, Jack Welch, the chairman of NBC’s parent company General Electric, said, “We’ll rue the day we let Roger and Rupert team up.” Murdoch has already tried and failed to buy CNN, and has already begun work on crafting news programs with hard-right slants, such as a 60 Minutes-like show that, reporter Tim Dickinson will write, “would feature a weekly attack-and-destroy piece targeting a liberal politician or social program.” Dan Cooper, the managing editor of the pre-launch Fox News, later says, “The idea of a masquerade was already around prior to Roger arriving.” Eric Burns, who will work for ten years as a Fox News media critic before leaving the network, will say in 2011: “There’s your answer right there to whether Fox News is a conventional news network or whether it has an agenda. That’s its original sin.” To get Fox News onto millions of cable boxes at once, Murdoch paid hundreds of millions of dollars to cable providers to air his new network. Murdoch biographer Neil Chenoweth will later write: “Murdoch’s offer shocked the industry. He was prepared to shell out half a billion dollars just to buy a news voice.” Dickinson will write, “Even before it took to the air, Fox News was guaranteed access to a mass audience, bought and paid for.” Ailes praised Murdoch’s “nerve,” saying, “This is capitalism and one of the things that made this country great.” [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011; Rolling Stone, 5/25/2011]Using Conservative Talk Radio as Template - In 2003, NBC’s Bob Wright will note that Fox News uses conservative talk radio as a template, saying: “[W]hat Fox did was say, ‘Gee, this is a way for us to distinguish ourselves. We’re going to grab this pent-up anger—shouting—that we’re seeing on talk radio and put it onto television.’” CBS News anchor Dan Rather will be more critical, saying that Fox is a reflection of Murdoch’s own conservative political views. “Mr. Murdoch has a business, a huge worldwide conglomerate business,” Rather says. “He finds it to his benefit to have media outlets, press outlets, that serve his business interests. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s a free country. It’s not an indictable offense. But by any clear analysis the bias is towards his own personal, political, partisan agenda… primarily because it fits his commercial interests.” [New Yorker, 5/26/2003]Putting Ideology Over Journalistic Ethics, Practices - Ailes, determined not to let journalists with ethical qualms disrupt Fox News as they had his previous attempt at creating a conservative news network (see 1971-1975), brought a hand-picked selection of reporters and staffers with demonstrable conservative ideologies from NBC, including business anchor Neil Cavuto and Steve Doocy, who hosts the morning talk show “Fox and Friends.” Both Cavuto and Doocy are Ailes loyalists who, Dickinson will say, owe their careers to Ailes. Ailes then tapped Brit Hume, a veteran ABC correspondent and outspoken conservative, to host the main evening news show, and former Bush speechwriter Tony Snow as a commentator and host. John Moody, a forcefully conservative ABC News veteran, heads the newsroom. Ailes then went on a purge of Fox News staffers. Joe Peyronnin, who headed the network before Ailes displaced him, later recalls: “There was a litmus test. He was going to figure out who was liberal or conservative when he came in, and try to get rid of the liberals.” Ailes confronted reporters with suspected “liberal bias” with “gotcha” questions such as “Why are you a liberal?” Staffers with mainstream media experience were forced to defend their employment at such venues as CBS News, which he calls the “Communist Broadcast System.” He fired scores of staffers for perceived liberal leanings and replaced them with fiery young ideologues whose inexperience helps Ailes shape the network to his vision. Before the network aired its first production, Ailes had a seminal meeting with Moody. “One of the problems we have to work on here together when we start this network is that most journalists are liberals,” he told Moody. “And we’ve got to fight that.” Reporters and staffers knew from the outset that Fox, despite its insistence on being “fair and balanced” (see 1995), was going to present news with a conservative slant, and if that did not suit them, they would not be at Fox long. A former Fox News anchor later says: “All outward appearances were that it was just like any other newsroom. But you knew that the way to get ahead was to show your color—and that your color was red.” The anchor refers to “red” as associated with “red state,” commonly used on news broadcasts to define states with Republican majorities. Ailes will always insist that while his network’s talk-show hosts, such as O’Reilly, Hannity, and others, are frankly conservative, Fox’s hard-news shows maintain what he calls a “bright, clear line” that separates conservative cant from reported fact. In practice, this is not the case. Before Fox aired its first broadcast, Ailes tasked Moody to keep the newsroom in line. Early each morning, Ailes has a meeting with Moody, often with Hume on speakerphone from the Washington office, where the day’s agenda is crafted. Moody then sends a memo to the staff telling them how to slant the day’s news coverage according to the agenda of those on “the Second Floor,” as Ailes and his vice presidents are known. A former Fox anchor will later say: “There’s a chain of command, and it’s followed. Roger talks to his people, and his people pass the message on down.” After the 2004 presidential election, Bush press secretary Scott McClellan will admit, “We at the White House were getting them talking points.” Targeting a Niche Demographic - Fox New’s primary viewership defies most demographic wisdom. According to information taken in 2011, it averages 65 years of age (the common “target demographic” for age is the 18-24 bracket), and only 1.38% of its viewers are African-American. Perhaps the most telling statistics are for the Hannity show: 86% describe themselves as pro-business, 84% believe government “does too much,” 78% are “Christian conservatives,” 78% do not support gay rights, 75% are “tea party backers,” 73% support the National Rifle Association, 66% lack college degrees, and 65% are over age 50. A former NewsCorp colleague will say: “He’s got a niche audience and he’s programmed to it beautifully. He feeds them exactly what they want to hear.” Other polls from the same time period consistently show that Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers, and one study shows that Fox News viewers become more misinformed the more they watch the network’s programming. Ailes's Security Concerns Affect Operations, Broadcasting - Ailes is uncomfortable in his office, a second-floor corner suite in the Fox News building at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan. His office is too close to the street for his tastes; he believes that gay activists intend to try to harm him, either by attacks from outside the building or through assaults carried out from inside. He also believes that he is a top target for al-Qaeda assassins. Ailes barricades himself behind an enormous mahogany desk, insists on having “bombproof” glass installed in the windows, surrounds himself with heavily-armed bodyguards, and carries a firearm (he has a concealed-carry permit). A monitor on his desk shows him what is transpiring outside his office door; once, when he sees a dark-skinned man wearing what he thought was Muslim garb on the monitor, he will order an immediate lockdown of the entire building, shouting, “This man could be bombing me!” The man will turn out to be a janitor. A source close to Ailes will say, “He has a personal paranoia about people who are Muslim—which is consistent with the ideology of his network.” A large security detail escorts him daily to and from his Garrison, New Jersey home to his Manhattan offices; in Garrison, his house is surrounded by empty homes Ailes has bought to enhance his personal security. According to sources close to Ailes, Fox News’s slant on gay rights and Islamist extremism is colored by Ailes’s fear and hatred of the groups. 'We Work for Fox' - Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian and Reagan biographer, will say: “Fox News is totalized: It’s an entire network, devoted 24 hours a day to an entire politics, and it’s broadcast as ‘the news.’ That’s why Ailes is a genius. He’s combined opinion and journalism in a wholly new way—one that blurs the distinction between the two.” Dickinson will write: “Fox News stands as the culmination of everything Ailes tried to do for Nixon back in 1968. He has created a vast stage set, designed to resemble an actual news network, that is literally hard-wired into the homes of millions of America’s most conservative voters. GOP candidates then use that forum to communicate directly to their base, bypassing the professional journalists Ailes once denounced as ‘matadors’ who want to ‘tear down the social order’ with their ‘elitist, horse-dung, socialist thinking.’ Ironically, it is Ailes who has built the most formidable propaganda machine ever seen outside of the Communist bloc, pioneering a business model that effectively monetizes conservative politics through its relentless focus on the bottom line.” Former Bush speechwriter David Frum will observe: “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us. Now we’re discovering that we work for Fox.” [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011; Rolling Stone, 5/25/2011]

Conservative radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, who also serves as a political analyst for CBS and MSNBC, publishes an essay in the Washington Post apologizing for her intolerance of homosexuals and claiming to have recanted her views. Ingraham, who won a reputation as a “gay-basher” while writing and editing the conservative Dartmouth Review in her undergraduate days (see 1984), writes that she realized gays are worthy of respect after her brother, Curtis Ingraham, came out as openly gay. Ingraham writes that she witnessed the struggles her brother and his late partner went through in coping with AIDS, writing of their “dignity, fidelity, and courage.” She writes that until her brother’s ordeal, she didn’t understand the urgency for AIDS funding, the problems gay couples face with insurance and the emotional strain of continuing discrimination, and concludes by noting that she regrets her earlier “callous rhetoric.” Jeffrey Hart, the Review’s faculty adviser, responds to Ingraham’s essay with an angry note to the conservative Weekly Standard challenging Ingraham’s choice of bringing the Review into what he calls her “phony political confession”; Hart writes that Ingraham held “the most extreme anti-homosexual views imaginable,” more so than any other staffer. He says she went so far as to avoid a local eatery where she feared the waiters were homosexual and might touch her silverware or spit on her food, exposing her to AIDS. Time columnist Margaret Carlson writes of Ingraham’s apparent conversion, “[D]oesn’t a commentator have a responsibility to find out about such things before venturing an opinion, even if it means looking outside your own tribe?” [Time, 4/21/1997] In 2009, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) will list Ingraham as one of the media’s worst anti-gay defamers of 2008, noting her repeated attacks on gays from her post as a Fox News contributor. [Out and About, 1/7/2009]

David Bossie. [Source: C-SPAN]David Bossie, an investigator for Representative Dan Burton (R-IN), is fired from his position. Bossie recently leaked transcripts of prison conversations featuring former Clinton administration official Webster Hubbell, who will be convicted of defrauding clients and sentenced to prison in 2004. Bossie fraudulently edited the transcripts to have Hubbell imply that First Lady Hillary Clinton broke the law while the two worked together in an Arkansas law firm. Bossie cut out portions of Hubbell’s conversations exonerating her from any wrongdoing, and sometimes rewrote Hubbell’s words entirely. In response to the controversy, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) says of Burton and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “I’m embarrassed for you, I’m embarrassed for myself, and I’m embarrassed for the [House Republican] conference at the circus that went on at your committee.” (In late April, Burton had called President Clinton a “scumbag,” further embarrassing Gingrich and the Republican leadership.) Bossie came to Burton’s staff from Citizens United (CU), which he joined in 1994 and soon rose to become director of government relations and communications. In 1988, as a member of Floyd Brown’s Presidential Victory Committee (PVC), Bossie helped produce the infamous Willie Horton ad (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). In 1992, as executive director of the PVC, Bossie oversaw the release of a fundraising letter accusing then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton of having an affair with an Arkansas woman, for use in an ad that falsely suggested it was the product of President Bush’s re-election campaign. Then-President Bush accused the PVC of engaging in “filthy campaign tactics,” and his son and campaign aide George W. Bush sent a letter asking donors not to give to the organization. Bossie has encouraged Burton to open an investigation into the suicide of Clinton administration aide Vince Foster (alleging that Foster was murdered as part of some unspecified White House plot, or perhaps an Israeli intelligence “black op”). While an aide to Senator Lauch Faircloth (R-NC), Bossie was found to have tried to intimidate a federal judge during a Whitewater-related investigation. Bossie has earned a reputation as a “Whitewater stalker,” combing Arkansas for “evidence” of crimes by the Clintons, and repeatedly making false and lurid allegations against the president and/or his wife. For a year, Bossie has promised that Burton’s committee would soon produce evidence of Chinese espionage and White House collusion, but any evidence of such a scandal has never been produced. A former lawyer for the Oversight Committee, John Rowley, has called Bossie’s actions “unrelenting self-promoti[on]” and challenged Bossie’s competence. Bossie says his transcripts were accurate (though the tapes of Hubbell’s conversations prove he is wrong), and blames committee Democrats for the controversy. [WorldNetDaily, 5/7/1998; Salon, 5/7/1998; Media Matters, 5/11/2004] WorldNetDaily reporter David Bresnahan writes that according to his sources, Bossie “was either extremely incompetent or was intentionally trying to sabotage” Burton’s investigations into the Clinton administration. Bresnahan also says that Burton allowed Bossie to resign instead of firing him, as other media sources report. [WorldNetDaily, 5/7/1998]

David Horowitz, in a 2009 appearance on Fox News. [Source: Fox News]Conservative pundit and author David Horowitz attacks the NAACP’s advocacy of restrictions on gun ownership. Horowitz writes an op-ed for the Internet magazine Salon in response to NAACP president Kwesi Mfume’s announcement that his organization would file a lawsuit to force gun manufacturers “to distribute their product responsibly.” Mfume noted that gun violence kills young black males at a rate almost five times higher than that of young white males, and in a press release, noted, “Firearm homicide has been the leading cause of death among young African-American males for nearly 30 years.” Horowitz calls the NAACP’s lawsuit “an absurd act of political desperation by the civil rights establishment,” and asks: “What’s next? Will Irish-Americans sue whiskey distillers, or Jews the gas company?” It is young black males themselves who bear the responsibility for the disparate number of gun-related deaths among their number, Horowitz writes, and nothing more; the NAACP is itself “racist” for claiming otherwise. “Unfortunately, as a nation we have become so trapped in the melodrama of black victimization and white oppression that we are in danger of losing all sense of proportion,” he writes, and says that the idea of any African-American oppression in America is nothing more than “a politically inspired group psychosis,” inspired by “demagogic race hustlers” and “racial ambulance chasers” such as Mfume, other civil rights leaders, including Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other organizations such as Amnesty International. Horowitz extends his argument to claim that “race baiting” by civil rights organizations, liberals, and Democrats is a tactic being used to defeat Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush (R-TX). The left is threatened by Bush’s “outreach to minority communities and by his support among blacks,” he writes, and asks, “Is there a vast left-wing conspiracy that sees Bush’s black support as a political threat?” Black males, Horowitz writes, die in disproportionately higher numbers because they commit a disproportionately high number of violent crimes; they do so, he writes, because they are predisposed, either by genetics or culturally, to commit violent crimes. Any other explanation, he writes, is to embrace what he calls “institutional racism” that makes excuses and blames whites for the suffering and oppression blacks apparently inflict upon themselves. African-Americans would do well, Horowitz writes, to abandon their support of “patronizing white liberals” and embrace conservative leadership offered by such figures as Bush and New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. However, he concludes, that “would mean abandoning the ludicrous claim that white America and firearms manufacturers are the cause of the problems afflicting African-Americans. It would mean taking responsibility for their own communities instead.” [Salon, 8/16/1998] In response, Time national correspondent Jack E. White labels Horowitz a “real, live bigot.” White calls Horowitz’s column “a blanket assault on the alleged moral failures of African-Americans so strident and accusatory that it made the anti-black rantings of Dinesh D’Souza (see March 15, 1982 and June 5, 2004) seem like models of fair-minded social analysis.” White asks: “Is he really unaware of concerted attempts by African-American civil rights leaders, clergymen, educators, and elected officials to persuade young black men and women to take more responsibility for their actions? Just two weeks ago, at the National Urban League convention in Houston, I heard Jesse Jackson preach a passionate sermon on that theme. In fact, he and other black leaders have been dwelling on such issues for years.” [Time, 8/30/1998]

John Prescott Ellis. [Source: Bush-Clinton Fraud (.com)]Fox News chairman Roger Ailes (see October 7, 1996), a Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988), chooses an unlikely reporter to anchor Fox’s election night coverage: John Prescott Ellis, a freelance Republican political adviser and the first cousin of George W. Bush (R-TX), the Republican presidential candidate. (Ellis is the son of George Herbert Walker Bush’s sister, Nancy Ellis.) Ellis was originally hired to cover the party primaries. A later study of voting patterns by the University of California will determine that in areas where voters have access to Fox News, the network’s relentless pro-Bush coverage shifts some 200,000 votes from Democrat Al Gore (D-TN) to Bush, but Ailes wants to make sure his network’s coverage is favorable to Bush, and has always had Ellis in mind for the election night anchor position, for which he specifically gives Ellis a 30-day contract. Ellis is very close to Bush’s brother Jeb Bush (R-FL), the sitting governor of Florida (“Jeb” is an acronym for his full name, John Ellis Bush). Ellis recused himself from campaign coverage in a June 1999 Boston Globe column, defending George W. Bush from allegations of cocaine use, calling the Clinton-Gore administration “morally berserk,” and telling his readers, “There is no way for you to know if I am telling you the truth about George W. Bush’s presidential campaign, because in his case, my loyalty goes to him and not to you.” Instead of this posing an ethical dilemma or being seen as a conflict of interest at Fox, Ellis is Ailes’s first and only choice to anchor the network’s election coverage. (Ailes will later tell a February 2001 House committee hearing, “We at Fox News do not discriminate against people because of their family connections”—see February 14, 2001.) [Washington Post, 11/14/2000; Salon, 11/15/2000; Observer, 11/19/2000; Associated Press, 12/11/2000; Buffalo Beat, 12/14/2000; Nation, 11/6/2006; New York Magazine, 5/22/2011] Ellis will pre-emptively call the election for Bush, sparking the Florida recount controversy and helping propel his cousin into the White House (see November 7-8, 2000). In a response to testimony in the same February 2001 House committee hearing, Joan Konner, a journalism professor who will lead a CNN-commissioned independent study of the problems in that network’s election night coverage, will call Ellis’s hiring a substantial breach of journalistic ethics and standards. “If John Ellis had, indeed, made comments stating that his loyalties to the Bush family superceded any commitment he has to his profession or his employer, then I would judge that to be not only a perceived conflict-of-interest but a real conflict-of-interest for a journalist,” she will write in a letter to Representative John Dingell (D-MI). “While that does not disqualify an individual from any position as a journalist, it would, in my judgement, disqualify that person for any decision-making role involving reporting on his relatives during an election. Often friends and relatives are hired by journalism organizations because of their connections to the newsmakers. Their access to sources makes them valuable to the organization. However, the news organization should take every precaution against placing such an individual in an assignment that could result in bias in reporting.” [House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, 2/14/2001]

The Daily Californian, the newspaper for the University of California at Berkeley, runs a full-page ad from conservative pundit David Horowitz calling the idea of “reparations” for the African-American descendants of slaves “racist.” Horowitz, a UC-Berkeley graduate, had attempted to persuade a number of college newspapers to run the ad on February 28, the last day of Black History Month. The ad, entitled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea—and Racist, Too,” says that reparations to African-Americans “have already been paid,” and asks, “What about the debt blacks owe to America?” The ad claims that blacks are themselves responsible for slavery and should accept this “fact.” The day after publishing the ad, the Daily Californian, responding to a harsh public outcry, apologizes for running the advertisement and writes that it allowed itself to “become an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry.” The UC-Davis newspaper also runs the ad, and also issues an apology. Many other California and Ivy League universities also receive the ad, but refuse to run it. [Daily Californian, 3/2/2001; Media Matters, 12/1/2004] Robert Chrisman, editor in chief of the journal Black Scholar, and Ernest Allen Jr., a professor of African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, respond to Horowitz’s ad in an essay published by the university’s African-American Studies department. They write in part: “While Horowitz’s article pretends to address the issues of reparations, it is not about reparations at all. It is, rather, a well-heeled, coordinated attack on black Americans, which is calculated to elicit division and strife.… As one examines the text of Horowitz’s article, it becomes apparent that it is not a reasoned essay addressed to the topic of reparations: it is, rather, a racist polemic against African-Americans and Africans that is neither responsible nor informed, relying heavily upon sophistry and a Hitlerian ‘Big Lie’ technique.” [University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 3/1/2001] Horowitz publishes the ad on his Web publication Front Page Magazine, but will later delete it. It will be chronicled in a 2004 article by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. [Media Matters, 12/1/2004]

Conservative pundit and author David Horowitz labels the entire United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance as itself “racist.” Horowitz, in an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes, refers to the conference, about to be held in Durban, South Africa, as being “run by Arab and African states… all of them, to a, to a state, practically, maybe there’s one that’s not a dictatorship, it’s racist.” He applauds the Bush administration’s decision not to send a senior representative to the conference. [Media Matters, 12/1/2004]

On Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes talk show, conservative pundit and author David Horowitz calls the Huntington Beach, California, public school district “racist.” Horowitz is objecting to Huntington Beach’s enforcement of racial-balancing policies that prevent white children from transferring out of certain schools and black children from transferring in. Horowitz says: “What’s going on here, it’s probably a class issue. But we don’t even know why these parents—first of all, it’s racist. The school district is racist.” When civil rights activist Lawrence Guyot attempts to refute Horowitz’s claims, Horowitz calls him a “racialist,” saying, “How can we settle the racial problem when we have racialists like Lawrence out there agitating to make every problem a racial problem?” [Media Matters, 12/1/2004]

Conservative pundit and author David Horowitz labels the NAACP and civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton “racists,” in an op-ed defending an author who has called for “racial purity.” Horowitz writes an op-ed for his Web-based magazine Front Page that defends Samuel Jared Taylor, the founder and editor of American Renaissance magazine; Taylor and his magazine have been described by the Anti-Defamation League as promoting “genteel racism,” using “pseudoscientific, questionably researched and argued articles that validate the genetic and moral inferiority of nonwhites and the need for racial ‘purity.’” In defending Taylor and American Renaissance, Horowitz writes: “There are many who would call Jared Taylor and his American Renaissance movement ‘racist.’ If the term is modified to ‘racialist,’ there is truth in the charge. But Taylor and his Renaissance movement are no more racist in this sense than Jesse Jackson and the NAACP. In my experience of Taylor’s views, which is mainly literary (we have had occasion to exchange opinions in person only once), they do not represent a mean-spirited position. They are an attempt to be realistic about a fate that seems to have befallen us (which Taylor would maintain was inevitable given the natural order of things). But Jared Taylor is no more ‘racist’ in this sense than any university Afro-centrist or virtually any black pundit of the left. He is not even racist in the sense that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are racist. He is—as noted—a racialist, which Frontpagemag.com is not.” At some point after publishing the op-ed, Horowitz will delete it, but it is quoted in a December 2004 article by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. Horowitz does not clarify the term “racialist,” though he has used it to disparage those who disagree with him (see March 15, 2002). [Media Matters, 12/1/2004]

The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), prints on its online blog an op-ed by the previous year’s editor, Andrew Grossman. The editorial mocks recent efforts to bring hairstylists to Dartmouth who can cut African-Americans’ hair, and observes: “Future programs in a similar vein include bringing to campus a small troupe of number-runners and, in the fall, several New York based crack dealers. The Student Assembly is now in the process of creating a committee of New Black Panthers to replace the ‘Committee on Student Life.’ Expect an authentic ‘Ghetto Party’ no later than by the end of the fall term.” [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006] In 2003, the progressive publication The Nation will say that the Review runs the inflammatory article in an attempt to return to the “shock journalism” of its earlier days, and says the Review is trying to revive interest in, and donations to, the publication. [Nation, 2/17/2003]

Michael Steele and Robert Ehrlich. [Source: Oliver Willis]The candidates for governor of Maryland, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Republican Robert Ehrlich, hold a debate in the Murphy Fine Arts Building on the campus of Morgan State University in Baltimore. After the debate, allegations surface that Democratic supporters of Townsend threw Oreo cookies at Michael Steele, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. Steele is African-American; to label an African-American an “Oreo” is to say that he, like an Oreo cookie, is black on the outside and white on the inside. It is considered a significant racial slur. The allegations are published by, among other sources, the conservative Washington Times, largely relying on reporting by S.A. Miller, who writes multiple stories concerning the alleged incident. First Iteration: Oreos 'Distributed' among Audience Members - The source is Ehrlich’s campaign spokesman Paul Schurick, who tells a Baltimore Sun reporter that he saw Democrats in the audience distributing Oreo cookies. Schurick initially makes no mention of anyone throwing cookies. One day after the event, Steele is quoted by the Sun as talking about the Townsend supporters in the crowd and what he terms “race-baiting” by her campaign, but says nothing about Oreos. On October 14, Weekly Standard columnist Jeffrey Goldberg repeats as fact Schurick’s allegations about Oreos being passed out at the debate. On October 21, syndicated conservative columnist George Will repeats the story, adding that “[s]ome of the audience had distributed Oreo cookies to insult Ehrlich’s running mate.” Second Iteration: 'Townsend Supporters Threw Oreo Cookies' - The same day as Will’s column appears, the Sun and the Associated Press report that Ehrlich told an audience at a Jewish day school that “Townsend supporters at the debate threw Oreo cookies” at Steele. The next day, the Salisbury, Maryland, Daily Times reports that “the Ehrlich campaign” claimed “protesters at the debate threw Oreo cookies at Steele.” The Washington Times reports Ehrlich’s claims on October 29. The Washington Post reports on October 31 that Townsend supporters “mocked” Steele by bringing Oreo cookies to the gubernatorial debate. On November 2, the London Times reports as fact that Steele “was bombarded with Oreo cookies” at the gubernatorial debate. Miller later tells other reporters that, while in attendance at the debate, he saw Steele get hit with the cookies. On November 22, the Capital News Service will report that Steele later “said an Oreo cookie rolled to his feet during the debate.” Reporter Retracts Claim - But in November 2005, after Steele announces his candidacy for Maryland’s gubernatorial position (see November 2005), Miller will tell a reporter for WTOP news radio, Mark Segraves, that he could not swear in court that anyone actually threw cookies because he did not, in fact, see it happen, though he had reported several times that he witnessed just such events. Times managing editor Fran Coombs will issue a denial that Miller ever spoke to Segraves or anyone else from WTOP, but will confirm that Miller did not, in fact, attend the debate. Coombs will tell WTOP that the Times stands behind its reporting, regardless of whether Miller’s claims are true or not, and will say that the reported Oreo incident is a diversion from the real story of a double standard on racism in the Democratic Party. Third Iteration: Steele Just Saw 'One or Two' Oreos at His Feet - Steele will tell Segraves that he was never struck by any thrown cookies. “I’ve never claimed that I was hit, no. The one or two that I saw at my feet were there. I just happened to look down and see them,” he will say. By November 15, the Associated Press will report that Ehrlich says “he did not personally see cookies thrown at Steele because he was on stage,” and “said he doesn’t know who might have thrown them.” Fourth Iteration: Steele Says Oreos 'Tossed in His General Direction' - Around the same time, the Associated Press will also report that, according to Steele, “Oreo cookies were tossed in his general direction as he left the debate at Morgan State University,” including two that “rolled up” next to his shoe. The stories are dramatically different, and quite contradictory. Steele’s November account differs from Schurick’s account and his own previous statements. Fifth Iteration: Oreos 'Thick in the Air Like Locusts' - In the Sun’s 2005 report, Schurick is quoted as saying: “It was raining Oreos. They were thick in the air like locusts. I was there. It was very real. It wasn’t subtle.” Sometime in late 2002, Ehrlich will tell a radio audience that his father was struck in the head by a cookie, though, according to the WBAL report at the time, “Schurick would not make Robert L. Ehrlich Sr. available for an interview.” No Mention in Reporting after Debate, No Video Evidence - In November 2005, the Baltimore Sun will report that no newspaper or television reports mentioned any such incident in their initial reporting of the debate, and although four local television stations recorded the debate, no video of any such incident exists. Eyewitnesses: Nothing Was Thrown - The Sun will report the operations manager of the Murphy Building at Morgan State, Vander Harris, as saying nothing of the sort occurred: “It didn’t happen here,” he will say. “I was in on the cleanup, and we found no cookies or anything else abnormal. There were no Oreo cookies thrown.” Several attendees at the event will tell the Sun that while some disruptive behavior occurred, no one threw anything at Steele nor anyone else. Morgan State spokesman Clint Coleman will say: “There were a lot of things, disturbances, by this group of outsiders who were bent on disrupting the debate. But I never actually saw Oreo cookies being thrown at him.” As for “raining Oreos,” Coleman will say, “I can tell you that did not happen.” Neil Duke, who moderated the event for the NAACP, will say he never saw any cookies thrown at Steele. “Were there some goofballs sitting in [the] right-hand corner section tossing cookies amongst themselves and acting like sophomores, as the legend has it?” Duke will say. “I have no reason to doubt those sources; I just didn’t see it.” And Wayne Frazier, the president of the Maryland-Washington Minority Contractors Association, will say he saw Steele walk into the auditorium that evening, but saw no Oreos. “I was there the whole time and did not see any of the so-called Oreo cookie incident,” he will say. “It could have happened and I didn’t see it, but I was in the auditorium from start to finish.” [WTOP Radio 103.5 (Washington), 11/15/2005; Media Matters, 11/21/2005]

Conservative pundit and author David Horowitz publishes an op-ed in his Front Page Magazine calling all Democrats “racists,” and claiming that the Democratic Party is “the party of special interest bigots and racial dividers” for its alleged support of “racist school policies.” Horowitz writes, “The Democratic Party has shown that it will go to the wall to preserve the racist laws which enforce these preferences, and to defend the racist school systems that destroy the lives of millions of children every year.” At some point, Horowitz will delete the op-ed from the Front Page Magazine Web site, but it will be quoted in a December 2004 article by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. [Media Matters, 12/1/2004]

Rush Limbaugh, in a publicity photo from ESPN. [Source: ESPN]Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, a former sports broadcaster recently given a slot as a commentator on National Football League games by ESPN, makes what many believe is a racist comment about black quarterback Donovan McNabb. McNabb, the starting quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, is a three-time Pro Bowl selection, a runner-up for the Most Valuable Player award, and has steered his team into two conference championships. Limbaugh tells his listeners that McNabb is overrated, and adds what ESPN will call “racial overtones that have set off a controversy.” Limbaugh says: “Sorry to say this, I don’t think he’s been that good from the get-go. I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.” Limbaugh Denies Racial Content; ESPN Defends Remarks - Limbaugh later says that his remarks were not meant to be racist; ESPN states: “Although Mr. Limbaugh today stated that his comments had ‘no racist intent whatsoever,’ we have communicated to Mr. Limbaugh that his comments were insensitive and inappropriate. Throughout his career, he has been consistent in his criticism of the media’s coverage of a myriad of issues.” ESPN vice president Mark Shapiro defends Limbaugh, saying: “This is not a politically motivated comment. This is a sports and media argument. Rush was arguing McNabb is essentially overrated and that his success is more in part [due] to the team assembled around him.” Because of his contractual insistence that he cannot be interviewed, no one from the press is allowed to ask Limbaugh for themselves what he did or did not mean. McNabb tells a Philadelphia reporter: “It’s sad that you’ve got to go to skin color. I thought we were through with that whole deal.” A subsequent ESPN report says that “Limbaugh’s remarks could be considered as untimely as they are thought to be out of bounds.” The report also notes that 10 NFL teams have had black quarterbacks start at least one game this season, and two of the league’s best quarterbacks, Michael Vick and Daunte Culpepper, are black. Eagles coach Andy Reid says, “I think the Philadelphia Eagles and the city of Philadelphia are very lucky to have Donovan McNabb.” [ESPN, 10/1/2003]Controversy over Remarks - Limbaugh’s remarks spark considerable controversy among the sports community and among political pundits, with many defending Limbaugh and others decrying his comments. Democratic presidential candidates Wesley Clark (D-AK), Howard Dean (D-VT), and Al Sharpton (D-NY) call on ESPN to fire Limbaugh. The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) calls on ESPN to “separate itself” from Limbaugh, with NABJ president Herbert Lowe saying: “ESPN’s credibility as a journalism entity is at stake. It needs to send a clear signal that the subjects of race and equal opportunity are taken seriously at its news outlets.” McNabb adds in a comment to a reporter: “It’s somewhat shocking to hear that on national TV from him. It’s not something that I can sit here and say won’t bother me.” On his radio show, Limbaugh declares himself “right about something” because otherwise “there wouldn’t be this cacophony of outrage that has sprung up in the sports writer community.” Los Angeles Weekly reporter John Powers notes that Limbaugh’s remarks must be taken in the context of his history of making racially inflammatory comments. Powers notes that if sports commentator Jim Rome made the same remarks, little would have been made of them, because Rome has a history of being “criticized for being too soft on black athletes and callers.” Instead, Powers writes, Limbaugh is “a radio thug who has made his name saying things like, ‘The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.’” Powers asks why Limbaugh would have brought the subject up at all, and answers his own question: “Because it fits Limbaugh’s ideologically charged belief that insidious ‘liberals’—that is, the media and government—keep bending over backward to give African-Americans special treatment that they don’t deserve. (This will come as news to most black Americans, who have a far higher level of poverty than the rest of the country.) We’ve moved beyond the point where big-time media figures will claim that blacks are inferior (and I have no evidence that Limbaugh thinks so). But you can still nab a huge audience by stirring up underlying racial resentments while pretending that you’re actually talking about ‘the media’—which is precisely what Limbaugh did in the McNabb case.… Limbaugh was practicing a kind of second-degree racism—on the carom, so to speak. And when he was called on it—not by his ESPN colleagues, alas—Rush beat a gutless retreat back to the bully’s pulpit of his radio show, where he can insist that widespread revulsion at his words proves they’re actually true (what reasoning!) and if anyone disagrees, he can just cut them off.” [ESPN, 10/2/2003; Los Angeles Weekly, 10/9/2003]Limbaugh Resigns ESPN Position - Limbaugh resigns his position with ESPN on October 2. In a statement, he says: “My comments this past Sunday were directed at the media and were not racially motivated. I offered an opinion. This opinion has caused discomfort to the crew, which I regret. I love NFL Sunday Countdown and do not want to be a distraction to the great work done by all who work on it. Therefore, I have decided to resign. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the show and wish all the best to those who make it happen.” ESPN president George Bodenheimer calls Limbaugh’s resignation “appropriate.” [ESPN, 10/2/2003]

Judith Regan (left) and Roger Ailes. [Source: Business Insider]Roger Ailes, a powerful Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988) and the founder and chairman of Fox News (see October 7, 1996), becomes embroiled in a legal conflict involving former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and his mistress, Judith Regan, a book editor for another arm of Fox News’s parent company News Corporation (NewsCorp). Ailes learns that Kerik has commandeered an apartment overlooking the site of the devastated World Trade Center, intended for the use of rescue and recovery workers, as a “love nest” for his trysts with Regan. Ailes is a close friend and political ally of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who recommended Kerik to head the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik is already being pilloried in the press for a number of other ethical and perhaps even criminal activities, and is being vetted for the DHS slot. Ailes and Giuliani do not want the Kerik-Regan affair, and the commandeered apartment, to come to the public’s notice. Court documents later say that Ailes “told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani’s presidential campaign.” Ailes “advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, [federal] investigators concerning Kerik.” The attempted cover-up will later be brought to light when NewsCorp fires Regan in 2006, and she brings a wrongful-termination suit that secures a $10.75 million settlement. Regan will not identify Ailes by name, only as a “senior executive” for NewsCorp, but other documents accidentally made public will reveal Ailes’s identity. Reportedly, Regan has her telephone conversations with Ailes on tape. NewsCorp will later claim that Regan has sent it a letter stating that “Mr. Ailes did not intend to influence her with respect to a government investigation.” Regan’s lawyer will say that NewsCorp’s claim does not reflect the entirety of Regan’s letter. Kerik himself will withdraw his name from consideration, and will later be sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud. [New Republic, 2/24/2011; New York Daily News, 2/24/2011; New York Times, 2/25/2011; New York Magazine, 5/22/2011]

Sam Francis, a white supremacist and syndicated columnist (see September 1995), marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education by calling it “the most dangerous and destructive Supreme Court decision in American history.” Francis blames the decision for giving the Supreme Court the impetus to “gut… state and local law enforcement powers” (referring to the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling that gave suspects basic rights after being arrested), “ban… school prayer,” weaken laws “against sedition and obscenity,” overturn death penalty statutes and “laws governing sexual morals,” and legalize abortion. “This is merely a partial list of the tyranny the Court has succeeded in creating because the American people allowed it to get away with Brown,” he writes. The decision is uniformly disastrous, he continues, with no “merits in law” to justify its existence. The Constitution never intended for children of different races to go to school together, Francis writes, and therefore the Supreme Court should never have ruled that schools should be desegregated. Moreover, he writes, school segregation actually promotes the academic success of African-American children. “By cramming through a legally groundless ruling that authorized the federal engineering of American society, Brown alienated Southern whites for at least a generation, wrecked public education, and helped revolutionize both cities and suburbs,” he concludes. “Today, schools once entirely white because of segregation laws are entirely black because of Brown. The white middle class exodus has meant the domination of cities by a black underclass, the crooks and demagogues it puts in office, and the financial and social devastation of American urban life.” Francis’s columns are provided to a national audience by Creators Syndicate. [VDare (.com), 5/17/2004]

Conservative radio host Michael Savage marks the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education by saying, “Everything about [the case] is sickening.” Savage criticizes President Bush for “trying to outmaneuver [Democratic presidential candidate John] Kerry on the race issue” by being photographed “hugging people of color” at a church in Birmingham, Alabama. Savage calls the idea that there is racism in America “left-wing brainwashing.… [W]hat, racism still exists? Well okay, where does it still exist? Can you tell me of some minority here who can’t get ahead in this country if he’s smart, or she’s smart, and she pushes, as much as a white person?… In fact they’re given priority treatment everywhere, you know that.” Savage calls a recent claim by Kerry that schools remain underfunded and divided by income “rubbish, pure rubbish,” and implies that African-American children will perform at lower levels than their white counterparts no matter how equal funding is: “I can show you one minority school after another, with more funding per capita than surrounding, suburban white schools, and the kids still do badly. Okay? Take that—put that in your pipe and smoke it, and go explain it to yourself, because I know the reasons why.” [Media Matters, 5/21/2004]

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) dismisses the complaint “Citizens United v. Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11.” The conservative lobbying group Citizens United (CU—see (May 11, 2004)) had complained to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that liberal documentarian Michael Moore released a movie, Fahrenheit 9/11 (see June 25, 2004), that was so critical of the Bush administration that it should be considered political advertising. If the movie is indeed political advertising, under federal law it cannot be shown within 30 days before a primary election or 60 days before a general election. The FEC dismisses the complaint, finding no evidence that the movie’s advertisements had broken the law. The movie’s distributors, Lions Gate, assure the FEC that they do not intend to advertise the movie during the time periods given under the law. [Federal Election Commission, 8/6/2004; Moneyocracy, 2/2012] In the aftermath of the FEC decision, CU leaders Floyd Brown (see September 21 - October 4, 1988) and David Bossie will decide that they can do what Moore did, and decide to make their own “documentaries.” Bossie realized after Fahrenheit 9/11 aired that it, and the television commercials promoting it, served two purposes—attacking President Bush and generating profits. Having already conducted an examination of the career of former First Lady Hillary Clinton (D-NY), now a sitting senator with presidential aspirations, the organization will decide to make its first “feature film” about her (see January 10-16, 2008). [New Yorker, 5/21/2012]

Wangari Maathai. [Source: AFP / Front Page Magazine]Conservative pundit David Horowitz, the founder and editor of Front Page Magazine, calls Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai a “black racist” for her speculations that the AIDS virus may have been created in a laboratory. Maathai, a Kenyan ecologist and environmental activist, says: “Some say that AIDS came from the monkeys, and I doubt that because we have been living with monkeys [since] time immemorial, others say it was a curse from God, but I say it cannot be that. Us black people are dying more than any other people in this planet.… It’s true that there are some people who create agents to wipe out other people. If there were no such people, we could have not have invaded Iraq. We invaded Iraq because we believed that Saddam Hussein had made, or was in the process of creating, agents of biological warfare. In fact it [the HIV virus] is created by a scientist for biological warfare.… Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious.” A US State Department official says the US does not agree with Maathai’s claims about AIDS. Horowitz responds to Maathai’s speculations by posting an article on the Front Page Web site entitled “Black Racist Wins Nobel Prize (Thanks to the Leftwing Racists on the Nobel Committee).” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/9/2004; Front Page Magazine, 10/9/2004; Media Matters, 12/1/2004] Four days later, Horowitz features an article by Front Page author Ben Johnson entitled “Nobel Hates Whitey,” in which Johnson calls Maathai “a paranoid, anti-white, anti-Western crusader for international socialism.” Johnson interprets Maathai’s words to mean that, in his phrasing, “white devils” concocted AIDS to eradicate blacks. He terms her claims “blood libel,” accuses her of fomenting violence against Kenyan police, and says she has worked with environmentalists at the United Nations to promote “global socialism.” [Front Page Magazine, 10/13/2004]

Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity claims, falsely, that former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore “brought Willie Horton to the American people.” Hannity is referring to the infamous “Willie Horton” ad of the 1988 presidential campaign, a Republican campaign strategy that claimed African-American Willie Horton was released and went on to rape a white woman by Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). Hannity’s statement comes in response to a recent citation of the Horton ad by Princeton University professor Cornel West, who cited the ad as an example of the Republican Party’s political exploitation of race. Hannity notes correctly that in the 1988 Democratic presidential primaries, Gore asked Dukakis about “weekend passes for convicted criminals,” referring to the Massachusetts furlough program that freed Horton. However, Gore never mentioned Horton at all. The first national mention of Horton came in the ads released by the Bush campaign and by an ostensibly independent conservative organization, the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC). According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Hannity has made similar claims about Gore first bringing up Horton in the past. [Media Matters, 11/10/2004]

US News and World Report senior writer Michael Barone accuses Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg of “blood libel on the American people” in response to Greenberg’s claim that the 1988 Bush campaign ads featuring convicted murderer Willie Horton were examples of “racial politics” (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters will note that the phrase “blood libel” specifically denotes accusations that a particular group, often Jews, practices human sacrifice, and cites one famous (and entirely false) allegation that “Jews kill Christian and Muslim children and use their blood to make Passover matzohs.” Barone and Greenberg are panelists on the evening’s edition of The Kalb Report, a panel discussion on C-SPAN hosted by journalist and author Marvin Kalb. The topic of the current discussion is “A Post-Election Analysis: Values, Religion, Politics, and the Media.” Greenberg calls the Horton ads examples of “racial politics in the 1980s,” to which Barone says in response: “I think this whole Willie Horton thing is a slur on the American people. The argument has been made by Democrats and liberals that the Bush campaign in ‘88 supposedly showed pictures of this man. It did not. There was an independent expenditure ad that did. But they did not. They showed white prisoners in the ad. And the argument against [1988 Democratic presidential candidate] Michael Dukakis, which he never effectively countered because there is no effective counter, is that giving furlough to people who have life without parole is a position that Dukakis defended over 11 years as governor of Massachusetts or governor candidate, is a crazy law, and he supported it over 11 years. You don’t have to be a racist to want a murderer, whatever his race, to stay in jail and not be allowed outside on the weekend. To say that the American people were racist and they just want black people in, is blood libel on the American people.” Barone is incorrect in saying that Horton’s picture was never used in the ads (it was not used in official Bush campaign ads, but it was used in ads by purportedly “independent” organizations supporting the Bush candidacy), and he fails to note that while Dukakis indeed supported the Massachusetts furlough law that allowed Horton the freedom to commit felonies even after being sent to jail for murder, he did not enact the law. Media Matters will note that the Horton ads have long been accepted as strong examples of racial politics, including a 1995 statement from Secretary of State Colin Powell who called the ads “racist.” [Media Matters, 11/17/2004]

A still from the advertisement featuring Terrell Owens and Nicollete Sheridan. [Source: ESPN]Author Sam Francis (see September 1995), in a column originally published on the white supremacist Web site VDare.com, criticizes the broadcast of an ESPN ad featuring a white actress kissing a black football player, and says the ad promotes the “fairly radical concept” that “interracial sex is normal and legitimate.” The ad features “white sexpot Nicolette Sheridan… smooching up to black football star Terrell Owens in the locker room of the Philadelphia Eagles.” Francis calls the ad “an intentional act of moral subversion,” and continues: “[T]he Owens-Sheridan ad was interracial and brazenly so—if only morals and taste had been the targets, the producers could easily have found white actresses who are less obviously Nordic than the golden-locked Miss Sheridan, but Nordic is what the ad’s producers no doubt wanted.… The message of the ad was that the white women are eager to have sex with black men, that they should be eager, and that black men should take them up on it.” Francis goes on to say the ad would have been less objectionable had the two people involved been of the same race. Instead: “[T]he ad’s message also was that interracial sex is normal and legitimate, a fairly radical concept for both the dominant media as well as its audience. Nevertheless, for decades, interracial couples of different sexes have been sneaked into advertising, movies, and television series, and almost certainly not because of popular demand from either race. The Owens-Sheridan match is only the most notorious to date. In the minds of those who produced the ad, race is at least as important as the moral and aesthetic norms their ad subverts. To them, the race as well as the religion, the morality, and the culture of the host society are all equally hostile and oppressive forces that need to be discredited, debunked, and destroyed. If the destruction can’t happen at the polls or through the courts, they can always use the long march through the culture that control of the mass media allows. Breaking down the sexual barriers between the races is a major weapon of cultural destruction because it means the dissolution of the cultural boundaries that define breeding and the family and, ultimately, the transmission and survival of the culture itself.” Francis’s article is given national distribution by Creators Syndicate, prompting an outcry against Francis’s apparent belief that interracial sex is immoral. Creators Syndicate editor Anthony Zurcher says that while he does not personally agree with Francis’s column, he does not find it “so reprehensible” that it should not have been syndicated. Francis’s article is archived at, among other places, the Web site of the American Renaissance movement, an openly “racialist” group calling for white separatism and the enforced oppression of non-whites in the US. [American Renaissance, 11/26/2004; Media Matters, 12/10/2004] David Brock, the president of the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, writes in a letter to Creators Syndicate: “We strongly condemn the clear bigotry in this column and assume that newspaper editors across the country feel the same way, as a search of newspapers available on Nexis revealed that none have chosen to run the column. Regardless, Creators’ willingness to distribute such abhorrent views calls into question the syndicate’s ethical and editorial standards.” [Media Matters, 12/7/2004]

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is accused of racism following remarks he makes about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on NBC’s Meet the Press. Asked by moderator Tim Russert if he could support conservative Justice Antonin Scalia as chief justice, Reid says Scalia’s ethics problems are troubling and that he disagrees with most of his positions, but adds that Scalia “is one smart guy.” Asked if he could support Thomas, Reid says: “I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I don’t—I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.” [NBC News, 12/5/2004] Conservative pundits are quick to accuse Reid of racism, though he never makes any mention of Thomas’s race. On December 6, Charles Krauthammer tells a Fox News audience: “In the end, you’ve got to ask yourself, why Scalia, good, Thomas, bad in the eyes of a man like Reid. I say it’s the liberal plantation mentality, in which if you’re a man on the right and white, it’s OK. If you are the man on the right and you’re African-American, it’s not.” The same day, Clifford May tells a CNN audience: “Look, Justice Thomas is African-American and he’s conservative. Some people [like Reid] will never forgive that and think that’s an open opportunity to insult him.” During his daytime radio broadcast, talk show host Rush Limbaugh tells his audience: “[I]t’s not a new page in the playbook but it’s certainly not as old as the playbook itself. But it’s been around awhile. That is conservative blacks are inept, a la Clarence Thomas.… You notice how easy it is for these people to be critical of blacks.” Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto writes that since Reid did not provide examples of Thomas’s “poorly written” opinions, “[i]n the absence of such examples, one can’t help but suspect that the new Senate Democratic leader is simply stereotyping Thomas as unintelligent because he is black.” That evening, Sean Hannity, co-host of Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, tells his listeners that Democrats routinely attack minority conservatives such as Thomas, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and federal judge nominee Miguel Estrada, and adds: “What I see is Democrats oppose African-Americans that are conservative, but yet they claim to support minority rights. And what I’m saying here is, why, if you’re for the advancement of minorities, why do you oppose every conservative African-American or Hispanic American? Why is this pattern emerging?” On December 7, African-American conservative Armstrong Williams says on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes: “Did you hear those racist remarks from Senator Harry Reid about Justice Thomas?… Harry Reid’s the one—he said Thomas was an embarrassment. He said he cannot write. That is racism.… That is racism, only because of the hue of his skin.… Read his [Reid’s] words. He was a racist.” On December 8, Taranto writes in another Wall Street Journal column, “To try to make Republican judges seem menacing, the Dems could call them ‘extremist’ or ‘out of the mainstream’ (and if the judges happen to be black, add that their opinions are ‘poorly written’).” [Washington Post, 12/6/2004; Media Matters, 12/8/2004] Conservative columnist Ann Coulter will include Reid in her much wider attacks against what she calls “liberal racism” (see December 8, 2004).

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter, in her daily syndicated column, accuses Democrats and liberals of “racism” for criticizing African-American conservatives. Coulter’s column is partly in response to recent remarks by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) that other conservatives have characterized as racist (see December 5-8, 2004). Coulter expands her criticism well beyond Reid, to accuse African-American columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times of being a “black liberal” whose criticism of black conservatives is, in her view, racially motivated, and accuses white Times media critic Caryn James of “launching racist attacks on black conservatives” (Coulter mistakenly identifies James as African-American). Coulter begins by referring to comments by the recently deceased Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory, who called Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia “a brillant and compelling extremist” and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (see October 13, 1991) “Scalia’s puppet.” According to Coulter, McGrory’s statement “is the kind of rhetoric liberals are reduced to when they just can’t bring themselves to use the N-word.” Referring to Reid’s characterization of Thomas as the author of “poorly written” Court opinions, Coulter writes, “You’d think Thomas’ opinions were written in ebonics.” She concludes by calling Herbert and James “Uncle Toms.” The same evening, Coulter continues her attacks on Fox News, appearing as a guest on Bill O’Reilly’s broadcast. According to Coulter, liberals “feel like they have blacks on the plantation, they can say whatever they like. And, interestingly, you don’t even hear Hispanic conservatives attacked in the same way that people like Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas are, and—and, I mean, just look at it. Look at what the Democrats’ minority leader in the Senate said this weekend. He praises Scalia as ‘Oh, he’s one smart guy, and his opinions, can’t dispute the logic, though I disagree with them,’ and then he says of Clarence Thomas ‘He’s an embarrassment. His opinions—they’re just poorly written.’” O’Reilly agrees, saying that Democrats who try to “demean people with whom [they] disagree with politically” are “loathsome.” Coulter says that Democrats are “enraged” about the 2004 elections, and in response “they’re lashing out at the blacks.” [Ann Coulter, 12/8/2009; Media Matters, 12/10/2009]

Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham repeat the long-debunked claim that former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore first mentioned convicted murderer and rapist Willie Horton in the context of a political campaign. Hannity and Ingraham are referring to the infamous “Willie Horton” ad of the 1988 presidential campaign, a Republican campaign strategy that falsely claimed African-American Willie Horton was released and went on to rape a white woman by Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). Responding to a Democratic political strategist’s citation of the Horton ad as an example of Republican political appeals to racism, Ingraham, a guest on Hannity’s show, says the Horton ad “was Al Gore’s idea,” and Hannity says, “Al Gore brought up Willie Horton in the first—in the [Democratic] primary.” As has long been proven, Gore never mentioned Horton in the 1988 Democratic presidential primaries; instead, it was the Bush-Quayle campaign that introduced Horton to the American public. [Media Matters, 2/16/2005] Hannity has charged Gore with first bringing up Horton before (see November 9, 2004).

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that “multicultural curricula” implemented in US public schools teach students that America would have been better off had white Europeans never come to American shores. Limbaugh says: “Multicultural curricula, multicultural training [is] understanding that you’re no better than anybody else and understanding the Indians got screwed, that it’s really their country. Understanding that white Europeans brought to this country syphilis and other disease, environmentalism, sexism, racism, and homophobia. If it weren’t for all of that, this really would be a great country if white Europeans had just stayed where they were.” [Media Matters, 5/11/2005] Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, has called multicultural education an “important requirement” for American children. [White House, 10/5/2001]

William Bennett. [Source: Ashbrook Center, Ashland University]William Bennett, the conservative radio host, Fox News contributor, and former secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, tells his listeners that one way to drop the US crime rate would be to “abort every black baby in this country.” Bennett, who reaches a weekly audience of some 1.25 million, is apparently going off a claim in the economic treatise Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, who argued that legalized abortion has lowered crime rates, since many aborted fetuses, growing up in poor homes and in single-parent or teenaged-parent homes, would have been more likely to commit crimes. Levitt and Dubner made no race-based claims. A caller to Bennett’s show says the national media “talk[s] a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I’ve read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade (see January 22, 1973), the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn’t—never touches this at all.” After some back-and-forth about assumptions over how many of those aborted fetuses would have grown up to be productive citizens, speculations about costs, and Bennett’s citation of the Freakonomics claim, he says: “I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.” [Media Matters, 9/28/2005; CNN, 9/30/2005] Bennett will face heavy criticism for his remarks (see September 29-30, 2005), but in his turn will claim that he is the one owed the apology (see September 30 - October 1, 2005).

Columnist Bob Herbert accuses Bennett of ‘racial effrontery.’ [Source: Louisville Courier-Journal]William Bennett, the conservative radio host who is facing heavy criticism for suggesting that aborting black children would lower the US crime rate (see September 28-October 1, 2005 and September 29-30, 2005), defends his position by saying: “I was putting forward a hypothetical proposition. Put that forward. Examined it. And then said about it that it’s morally reprehensible. To recommend abortion of an entire group of people in order to lower your crime rate is morally reprehensible. But this is what happens when you argue that the ends can justify the means.… I’m not racist, and I’ll put my record up against theirs,” he says, referring to leading Democrat Nancy Pelosi and other critics. “I’ve been a champion of the real civil rights issue of our times—equal educational opportunities for kids. We’ve got to have candor and talk about these things while we reject wild hypotheses,” Bennett says. “I don’t think people have the right to be angry, if they look at the whole thing. But if they get a selective part of my comment, I can see why they would be angry. If somebody thought I was advocating that, they ought to be angry. I would be angry. But that’s not what I advocate.” Bennett says he owes no one an apology: “I don’t think I do. I think people who misrepresented my view owe me an apology.” [CNN, 9/30/2005]Says Topics of Race and Crime Cannot Be off-Limits - Later, he continues to defend his remarks, saying, “It would have worked for, you know, single-parent moms; it would have worked for male babies, black babies.” Asked why he would bring the subject up at all, Bennett says: “There was a lot of discussion about race and crime in New Orleans. There was discussion—a lot of it wrong—but nevertheless, media jumping on stories about looting and shooting, and roving gangs and so on. There’s no question this is on our minds.… What I do on our show is talk about things that people are thinking… we don’t hesitate to talk about things that are touchy. I’m sorry if people are hurt, I really am. But we can’t say this is an area of American life [and] public policy that we’re not allowed to talk about—race and crime.” [ABC News, 9/29/2005; Guardian, 10/1/2005]Feeding Perception that Republicans are Racist - Robert George, a black conservative editorial writer for the New York Post, agrees that Bennett did not mean his remarks as racist. But, he says, he worries that Bennett is feeding the perception that Republicans are racist. “His overall point about not making broad sociological claims and so forth, that was a legitimate point,” George says. “But it seems to me someone with Bennett’s intelligence… should know better the impact of his words and sort of thinking these things through before he speaks.” [ABC News, 9/29/2005] Bob Herbert, a black progressive columnist for the New York Times, later says he was unsurprised by Bennett’s remarks: “I’ve come to expect racial effrontery from big shots in the Republican Party. The GOP has happily replaced the Democratic Party as a safe haven for bigotry, racially divisive tactics and strategies, and outright anti-black policies. That someone who’s been a stalwart of that outfit might muse publicly about the potential benefits of exterminating blacks is not surprising to me at all.… Bill Bennett’s musings about the extermination of blacks in America (it would be ‘impossible, ridiculous, morally reprehensible’) is all of a piece with a Republican Party philosophy that is endlessly insulting to black people and overwhelmingly hostile to their interests.” [New York Times, 10/6/2005]

Rush Limbaugh is quoted in the book 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America as saying: “I mean, let’s face it, we didn’t have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.” The book also claims that Limbaugh told a radio audience in 1998: “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.” The book does not cite a source for the alleged comments. In 2009, Limbaugh will deny making them, telling his listeners: “There’s a quote out there… that I somehow, some time ago, defended slavery and started cracking jokes about it. And, you know, you say a lot of things in the course of 15 hours a week, over the course of 21 years. We’ve gone back, we have looked at everything we have. There is not even an inkling that any words in this quote are accurate. It’s outrageous, but it’s totally predictable. It’s being repeated by people who have never listened to this program, they certainly didn’t hear it said themselves because it was never said.” [Snopes (.com), 10/13/2009]

The cover of the Review, depicting a Native American displaying a scalp. [Source: Dartmouth Review via Huffington Post]The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), publishes its latest edition; the cover depicts a Native American as what Indian Country Today later describes as a “crazed ‘savage’ holding up a scalp.” The cover headline: “The Natives Are Getting Restless”; the story ridicules Native American students for protesting a recent spate of anti-Native incidents on campus. Dartmouth College was founded in 1769 as a school for Native Americans, and has a long history of supporting Native American causes; in light of its history, the local and national Native American communities have been dismayed in recent years by what they call the anti-Indian sentiments espoused by the Review and other Dartmouth students. The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) joins with the student organization Native Americans at Dartmouth (NAD) to ask college administrators to address the recent string of “culturally insensitive, biased, and racist” events that they say have created a hostile campus environment at the school. “Colleges and universities are places where diversity and tolerance should foster productive, inclusive, and thriving intellectual communities,” says NCAI President Joe Garcia. “When cartoonization, mockery, and insensitivity of Native peoples, cultures, and traditions persist on college campuses, Native students are at a unique disadvantage in that intellectual community. NCAI joins NAD, [Dartmouth] President James Wright, and the broader Dartmouth community in condemning the recent series of biased incidents at the college, and stands with NAD in its efforts at combating bias in your community.” In recent months, Review staffers and Dartmouth students have orchestrated a number of events that Native Americans call racist and intolerant, including the distribution of homecoming shirts depicting a knight performing a sex act on an American Indian caricature, and the physical disruption by fraternity pledges of an American Indian drumming circle. The publication of the Review with its offensive cover sends the Native American community, and its supporters, into new levels of outrage, with Indian Country Today noting that the illustration of the “savage” has often been used by anti-Native American organizations. Over 500 students, faculty, and administrators take part in a demonstration supporting the Native American community. In response, the Review editor, Daniel Linsalata, calls the cover “hyperbolic” and “tongue-in-cheek,” and says that while he “regret[s]” that the cover “may have” offended some, he stands behind “the editorial content” of the edition. The remainder of his response attacks NAD, and argues that the cover is appropriate to the discussion: “The accusation that this cover was maliciously designed as a wantonly racist attack on Native Americans is patently false,” he says. Wright issues a statement apologizing for the racial slur. Four days after Linsalata’s response, editors Nicholas Desai and Emily Ghods-Esfahani write that the cover was “a mistake” that “distracted attention from the serious journalism the Dartmouth Review has been publishing.” [Dartmouth Review, 12/2/2006; Dartmouth Review, 12/6/2006; Indian Country Today, 12/15/2006]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners that professional football games often look like fights between two African-American street gangs. Discussing a recent National Football League (NFL) game which featured some apparently objectionable celebrating by players after scoring a touchdown, Limbaugh says that such “over the top” celebrations are sparked by “cultural” differences between black and white players. “There’s something culturally wrong that is leading to all this… classless” behavior, he says, and continues: “Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.” [Media Matters, 10/12/2009] Two years later, Limbaugh will address his comment on his broadcast. He will fail to apologize for the remark, and will say instead: “It was not racial. Bloods and Crips makes it look racial. But the way I chose to describe it. I could have perhaps chosen a different term.” Limbaugh claims that his remark was taken “out of context” by the news media, and cites the “hypocrisy” of the media in reporting his comments as possibly racially offensive. [Media Matters, 10/14/2009] Limbaugh will be thwarted in his 2009 attempt to buy the St. Louis Rams NFL franchise (see October 15, 2009) because of his racially inflammatory remarks against black football players, including this one and a 2003 slur involving African-American quarterback Donovan McNabb (see September 28 - October 2, 2003). Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay will tell other owners, “When there are comments that have been made that are inappropriate, incendiary, and insensitive… our words do damage, and it’s something that we don’t need.” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will call Limbaugh’s comments “divisive” and something that cannot be tolerated from an NFL owner. [New York Post, 10/13/2009]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh calls Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and actress Halle Berry “Halfrican Americans.” According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh, discussing Obama’s nascent presidential candidacy, says, “Barack Obama has picked up another endorsement: Halfrican American actress Halle Berry.” Limbaugh then says, “‘As a Halfrican American, I am honored to have Ms. Berry’s support, as well as the support of other Halfrican Americans,’ Obama said.” Limbaugh later concedes that Obama “didn’t say it.” Limbaugh tells his audience that Obama “is the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya.” [Media Matters, 1/24/2007]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his audience why he believes Democrats support affirmative action, the set of legal guidelines that mandate equitable hiring practives on the basis of race. “I made this point in the early eighties, mid-eighties when this all started,” he says. “Affirmative action is about making sure that the race wars never end.” Authors Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella, in their book Echo Chamber, will note that Limbaugh’s audience, like those of most conservative pundits and talk shows, is overwhelmingly white. [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 102]

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck tells his listeners that because he is American, white, Christian, and conservative, he “can’t win.” “Conservatives get no respect,” he says, and adds: “[I]f you are a white human that loves America and happens to be a Christian, forget about it, Jack. You are the only one that doesn’t have a political action committee for you.… I mean, I was talking about it with my family yesterday. I said, ‘I’m tired of being the least popular person in the world.‘… We’re Americans. Nobody likes Americans. We’re Americans, so the world hates us. But then inside of America, we love America—and that’s becoming more and more unpopular.” Being a Christian “is not popular anymore,” he claims, and says: “I’ve got to find one thing that I agree with the rest of the world on, I guess. I’m tired of being in that group.” For all of Beck’s claims of being unpopular because of his heritage, his faith, and his race, he hosts a daily radio show, an evening program on CNN Headline News, and serves as a commentator on ABC’s Good Morning America. [Media Matters, 4/2/2007]

Representative Ron Paul, profiled in a New York Times article, answers a question about his connections to the John Birch Society (JBS—see March 10, 1961, 1978-1996, August 4, 2008 and December 2011). “Oh, my goodness, the John Birch Society!” Paul replies in what the reporter calls “mock horror.” “Is that bad? I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society. They’re generally well educated and they understand the Constitution. I don’t know how many positions they would have that I don’t agree with. Because they’re real strict constitutionalists, they don’t like the war, they’re hard-money people.” [New York Times, 7/22/2007] The JBS is, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a prominent right-wing extremist group that has accused a number of lawmakers, including former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, of being “closet Communists,” and promotes “wild conspiracy theories” such as the “international Jewish” conspiracy to control the global economy and the idea that the World War II Holocaust never happened. The JBS has been a pioneer in what an analysis by Political Research Associates (PRA) will call “the encoding of implicit cultural forms of ethnocentric white racism and Christian nationalist antisemitism rather than relying on the white supremacist biological determinism and open loathing of Jews that had typified the old right prior to WWII.” PRA will note, “Throughout its existence, however, the Society has promoted open homophobia and sexism.” [Political Research Associates, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 8/17/2010]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh asserts that the only reason Democrats are interested in stopping the genocide in Darfur is to secure the African-American vote. Democrats, Limbaugh says, “want to get us out of Iraq, but they can’t wait to get us into Darfur.… There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur? It’s black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they’re in trouble.” Limbaugh, in a conversation with a caller, continues: “So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela—who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.… The liberals will use the military as a ‘meals on wheels’ program. They’ll send them out to help with tsunami victims. But you put the military—you put the military in a position of defending US national interest, and that’s when Democrats and the liberals oppose it.” The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters will note that Congress has exhibited overwhelming bipartisan support for US intervention in Darfur; Republicans sponsored legislation sanctioning Sudan, which contains the Darfur region. The House passed the bill on a 416-3 vote, the Senate passed it unanimously, and President Bush signed it into law shortly thereafter. [Media Matters, 8/23/2007]

The sanctuary of Trinity United Churco of Christ. [Source: Chocolate City (.cc)]PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, investigates claims that Democratic senator Barack Obama (D-IL), a presidential candidate, belongs to “a racist, anti-American church.” The investigation concludes that Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, “teaches black empowerment, not racism, and that it claims Africa as its ethnic heritage.” Anonymous emails “ricocheting around the Internet” claim that Obama should not be president because his church is “anti-American” and “scary,” and, somewhat contradictorily, that Obama is not a Christian, but a “covert Muslim” (see December 19, 2007 and January 11, 2008). The emails began within hours of Obama’s Democratic primary win in the Iowa caucuses. One email declares: “If you look at the first page of their Web site, you will learn that this congregation has a nonnegotiable commitment to Africa. No where [sic] is AMERICA even mention [sic]. Notice too, what color you need to be if you should want to join Obama’s church… B-L-A-C-K!!!” PolitiFact writes: “It’s the latest salvo in the email wars—anonymous missives launched into cyberspace seeking to frighten voters away from presidential candidates in the guise of friendly warnings. Typically they use kernels of truth, then launch into falsehood.” Chicago historian Martin Marty, a white religious expert who has attended Trinity United services in the past, says: “There’s no question this is a distortion.… Whites are highly accepted. They don’t make a fuss over you, but you’re very much welcomed.” PolitiFact finds that Trinity United is one of the larger black “megachurches” in the US, preaches a message of black self-reliance, and has as its motto, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” The church does have a “nonnegotiable commitment to Africa.” However, it has no racial standards for its members, and does have white and other non-black members. Obama is a member who has attended regularly for years, though with the travails of recent presidential campaigning, his attendance has fallen off in recent weeks. The main focus of the email vitriol, aside from Obama, is Trinity’s senior pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who preaches passionately and focuses on what he calls “black liberation theology.” Obama has written in his memoir, The Audacity of Hope, that it was Wright’s preaching that inspired him to convert from a secular agnosticism to Christianity during the 1980s. He titled his memoir after one of Wright’s sermons. PolitiFact finds, “Trinity’s commitment to Africa appears to be more a statement of philosophical orientation than of political support for any particular African country,” and notes that the church’s Web site states, “Just as those of Jewish heritage advocate on behalf of the state of Israel, and those of Irish heritage advocate on behalf of Ireland, and those of Polish descent for Poland, so must we of African descent care about the land of our heritage—the continent of Africa.” Divinity professor Dwight Hopkins, an African-American member of Trinity, describes the church as “highly evangelical and Bible-based.” The preaching, he says, tends to be “common-sense folk wisdom laced with theological sophistication.… There’s singing and shouting and people get happy. It’s an old-fashioned, mainstream down-home church that somehow is captured in this 8,000-person congregation.” John C. Green, a political science professor, says scholars do not view black liberation theology as racist, but some outsiders may hold that opinion. “A black empowerment theology could be seen as having a racist element because it isn’t neutral in regards to race,” he says. “The person who wrote this email obviously has very strong feelings about this.” In February 2007, Obama said of his church and his faith: “Commitment to God, black community, commitment to the black family, the black work ethic, self-discipline, and self-respect. Those are values that the conservative movement in particular has suggested are necessary for black advancement. So I would be puzzled that they would object or quibble with the bulk of a document that basically espouses profoundly conservative values of self-reliance and self-help.” In recent weeks, Obama has distanced himself somewhat from Wright and Trinity, because, his campaign says, he wishes to avoid bringing an overwhelming influx of media attention onto the church. The campaign said in a statement, “[B]ecause of the type of attention it was receiving on blogs and conservative talk shows, he decided to avoid having statements and beliefs being used out of context and forcing the entire church to defend itself.” Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity has called Trinity’s teachings “divisive,” and engaged in what PolitiFact calls “a spirited debate” with Wright on one of his broadcasts. Conservative ethicist Michael Cromartie agrees with Hannity, saying: “It’s too strong to call it racist but at the same time, it is a form of identity politics or identity theology, which insists you white people can come to this church, but you won’t get it.” Trinity has stated: “There is no anti-American sentiment in the theology or the practice of Trinity United Church of Christ. To be sure, there is prophetic preaching against oppression, racism, and other evils that would deny the American ideal.” Green is reminded of the 1960 presidential election, when many opponents of candidate John F. Kennedy attacked Kennedy for being Catholic. “But we didn’t have the Internet back then,” he says. “This kind of communication has always gone on, but it moves much faster now.” [St. Petersburg Times, 1/6/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 1/6/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 1/11/2008]

CNN Headline News talk show host Glenn Beck tells his viewers that if presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D-NY) wants to be consistent with her belief in affirmative action, she should give her opponent, African-American candidate Barack Obama (D-IL), “an additional five percentage points just for the years of oppression.” Beck makes his statement after asserting that anyone mentioning Obama’s race in a denigrating or derogatory fashion is “insulting,” and something only “professional separators” would attempt: “All they do is pull us apart so they can angle and try to grab as many people and ignite their base—and it’s outrageous. And it’s happening on all sides, on all issues, and it has got to stop or we’re going to disintegrate.” [CNN, 1/25/2008; Media Matters, 1/28/2008]

President Bush makes racially charged statements while addressing an audience at a Republican fundraiser in Hillsborough, California, outside San Francisco. The fundraiser, hosted by the chairman of an investment firm, raises $1.5 million for the Republican National Committee. [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/31/2008] The media will not learn about Bush’s remarks until late 2009, when former Bush administration speechwriter Matt Latimer publishes his book, Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor. Latimer will write: “He talked about his own failings with alcoholism as the reason he supported his faith-based initiative. ‘My philosophy is, find somebody who hurts and do something about it,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait for government to tell you what to do.’ He bluntly talked about his own situation. ‘I was beginning to love alcohol over my wife and kids. It got to a point when Billy Graham came into my life. But I was hardheaded and didn’t want to listen for a while. And then I stopped drinking overnight. I am a one-man faith-based initiative. Alcohol was competing for my affections. And it would have ruined me.’ He said things that could ruffle feathers, such as how he’d recently gone to a faith-based program run by ‘former drunks.’ He said he went to see a prison ministry program, noting that ‘everyone was black, of course.’ All eyes turned in search of the sole African American in the audience of donors. They wanted to see if he was offended.” Latimer will write that the sole African-American donor did not “appear to be” offended, and will defend Bush, writing that he “didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. He just liked making blunt observations to shock his audience.” [Think Progress, 9/23/2009]

Michael Savage. [Source: Portland Indymedia]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic presidential primary race, now between African-American Barack Obama and female Hillary Clinton, “the first affirmative-action election in American history.” Savage says: “We have a woman and a multi-ethnic man running for office on the Democrat side. Is this not akin to an affirmative action election? Isn’t that why the libs are hysterical, tripping over themselves to say amen and yes to this affirmative election vote?” Because Americans do not support affirmative action, Savage asserts, voters will reject either Democratic candidate in the November presidential elections. “When they are heard from, the affirmative action ticket goes down in flames… I don’t really care who’s gonna be on the other side, they win. America’s not ready for an affirmative action presidency. I stand by those words.” Savage goes on to characterize Democratic supporters as “radical red-diaper doper babies from Brooklyn who made a fortune in the film business by urinating on the American flag and decimating the American value, the values that you grew up loving. They [are t]he ones who made a fortune hating America.” [Media Matters, 2/4/2008]

Larry Niven. [Source: Larry Niven]A group of science fiction writers calling themselves SIGMA is engaged in advising the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on how to protect the nation. Undersecretary of Science and Technology Jay Cohen says he likes their unconventional thinking. Two of the approximately 24 members are right-wing libertarian authors Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, who have collaborated on a number of books as well as writing numerous novels and short stories on their own. One of Niven’s more controversial ideas is to help hospitals stem financial losses by spreading rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants. Niven believes the rumors would discourage Latinos from using the nation’s emergency rooms and thus ease the burden on hospitals. “The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven says. Pournelle asks, somewhat jokingly, “Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Niven replies, “I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work.” [National Defense Magazine, 2/28/2008] One blogger, apparently angered by Niven’s proposal, later writes that Niven’s idea comes from his “magical, mystical fictional universe where hospitals don’t have to treat rednecks who OD on meth, insurance companies aren’t inflating the cost of hospital care, under-regulated drug companies aren’t making massive profits, and uninsured children of hardworking parents don’t fall off skateboards.” [Mark Frauenfelder, 3/28/2008]

’Gunny’ Bob Newman. [Source: Newsradio 850 KOA]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host “Gunny” Bob Newman, the host of a popular Denver talk show, responds to a Tennessee Republican Party ad attacking presidential contender Barack Obama (D-IL)‘s wife Michelle to accuse Obama of behaving like a stereotypical black street hood. Calling Obama a “clown” and asking if he is “some sort of a bad _ss,” Newman then addresses Obama directly, demanding: “What are you gonna do, Obama, come to Denver and try, key word try, to whip my white _ss? Son, you are not some sort of macho tough guy, trust me. You are just another blowhard, make-believe thug who wants to be the most powerful man on Earth. You’re a far-left, terrorist-hugging politician, not the bad-boy gangsta you want people to believe you are.” Obama called Republican attacks on his wife “unacceptable” and “detestable,” apparently provoking Newman’s response. [Media Matters, 5/20/2008] In previous broadcasts, Newman accused Obama of dressing like a terrorist sympathizer (see February 25, 2008).

Conservative radio host Michael Savage repeatedly refers to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as an “Afro-Leninist.” As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage asserts: “If the other side [the Republican Party] had one decent candidate, one real conservative, he would win 70-30. But because we have a retread, a Bush III [referring to Republican candidate John McCain], it’s going to be very doubtful as to whether or not we can avoid outright Marxism and Afro-Leninism running this country.” Later in the broadcast, he calls Obama “[a]n Afro-Leninist who’s achieved nothing” and “the most narcissistic candidate in the history of the presidency.” [Media Matters, 6/10/2008]

A 2003 publicity photo of Monica Crowley. [Source: 96.9 FM WTKK]Fox News commentator Monica Crowley, guest-hosting conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show, tells her audience that Democratic candidate Barack Obama is not African-American, but “Arab African.” Crowley admits that she has done no research to verify her claim, but is quoting conservative blogger Kenneth Lamb, who himself provided no verification to his February 2008 claim. Crowley says: “[A]ccording to this genealogy—and again, because I haven’t done the research, I can’t verify this—but according to this guy Kenneth Lamb, Barack Obama is not black African, he is Arab African.… And yet, this guy is campaigning as black and painting anybody who dares to criticize him as a racist. I mean, that is—it is the biggest con I think I’ve ever seen.” (Lamb has consistently refused to provide the research to back his claim, but has instead challenged critics to do the research themselves—including surreptitiously obtaining samples of Obama’s DNA for testing—and accused the administration of Harvard University of complicity in perpetuating the “sleight of hand.”) [Media Matters, 6/26/2008] In September 2008, radio host Rush Limbaugh will repeat the falsehood (see September 22, 2008).

Cover of ‘The Obama Nation’ [Source: Threshold / FactCheck (.org)]Dr. Jerome Corsi, a conservative author and blogger who was deeply involved in the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign to besmirch presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA), publishes a book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. The title is a play on the word ‘abomination.’ In his book, Corsi, who writes for the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily and blogs at the extremist Free Republic, attacks Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in a fashion similar to that used against Kerry—combining fact, hyperbole, speculation, and outright falsehoods in an attempt to demean and disparage Obama’s character and professional career. The publisher, Threshold (a division of Simon and Schuster devoted to publishing conservative political works), calls the book “[s]crupolously sourced” and “[m]eticulously researched and documented…” Among other allegations, Corsi accuses Obama of growing up under the influence of Communist, socialist, and radical Islamic mentors; of deep and secretive affiliations with ‘60s radicals William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn; of espousing what he calls “black liberation theology” through his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright; connections to socialists and radical Islamists in Kenya, his father’s home country; deep and criminal ties to Chicago real-estate mogul Tony Rezko; and an intent to, if elected president, implement what Corsi calls “far-left” domestic and foreign policies. [Simon and Schuster, 8/1/2008; New York Times, 8/12/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] The book debuts as number one on the New York Times bestseller list, propelled by large bulk sales (large buys by particular organizations designed to artificially elevate sales figures) and an intensive marketing campaign carried out on conservative talk radio shows. “The goal is to defeat Obama,” Corsi says. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.” [New York Times, 8/12/2008]Allegations Roundly Debunked - Unfortunately for Corsi, his allegations do not stand up to scrutiny. FactCheck.org, a non-partisan “‘consumer advocate’ for voters” site run by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, finds that Corsi’s book “is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods.” It “is not a reliable source of facts about Obama.” FactCheck notes: “Corsi cites opinion columns and unsourced, anonymous blogs as if they were evidence of factual claims. Where he does cite legitimate news sources, he frequently distorts the facts. In some cases, Corsi simply ignores readily accessible information when it conflicts with his arguments.” The organization notes that Threshold’s chief editor, Republican operative Mary Matalin, said the book was not political, but rather “a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that.” FactCheck responds: “The prominent display of Corsi’s academic title (he holds a Ph.D. in political science) seems clearly calculated to convey academic rigor. But as a scholarly work, The Obama Nation does not measure up. We judge it to be what a hack journalist might call a ‘paste-up job,’ gluing together snippets from here and there without much regard for their truthfulness or accuracy.” [FactCheck (.org), 2008; FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] The St. Petersburg Times’s PolitiFact finds, “Taken as a whole, the book’s primary argument is that Obama is a likely communist sympathizer with ties to Islam who has skillfully hidden his true agenda as he ruthlessly pursues elected office,” an argument that the organization concludes is wholly unsupported by Corsi’s arguments and sources. [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008] And an Associated Press article finds the book a “collect[ion of] false rumors and distortions [designed] to portray Obama as a sort of secret radical who can’t be trusted.” [Associated Press, 8/16/2008]Unreliable Sources - As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Corsi’s sources are often unreliable: for example, his allegation that Obama’s father divorced his mother according to “Islamic sharia law” is based on a single and unverifiable post made by an anonymous blogger. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes that although Corsi points to his over 600 endnotes as proof of his “rigorous” sourcing, many of those endnotes refer to obscure, unverifiable Internet postings, blog posts, and opinion columns. Four of Corsi’s sources refer to his own work. “Where Corsi does cite news sources,” the site says, “he sometimes presents only those that are consistent with his case while ignoring evidence that doesn’t fit the picture he paints.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]Demonstrably False Claims - Some of Corsi’s claims are completely false: his statement that Obama did not dedicate his 2004 memoir, Dreams from My Father, to his parents or grandparents is easily debunked merely by reading the book’s introduction, in which Obama wrote, “It is to my family, though—my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents—that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book.” [Media Matters, 8/4/2008; St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008] Corsi also claims, falsely, that Obama holds dual citizenship in the US and Kenya, though the Kenyan Constitution specifically prohibits dual citizenship. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] Corsi goes on to claim that Obama has long rejected his white family members from his mother’s side, including his grandparents in Hawaii who raised him for much of his childhood. This is part of Corsi’s argument about Obama’s secret embrace of the so-called “radical black rage” teachings of American activist Malcolm X. According to Corsi’s reading of Obama’s memoir: “His race, he self-determines, is African-American. In making that determination, he rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents. We do not have to speculate about this. Obama tells this to us outright; his words are direct, defying us to miss his meaning.” But PolitiFact calls this “a significant misreading of Obama’s memoir,” and notes that Corsi ignores a large amount of evidence that points to Obama’s continued close relationship with his white family members throughout his life. PolitiFact concludes, “To conclude that Obama rejects everyone white, including his mother and his grandparents, Corsi has to significantly read against the memoir’s stated meaning. We find factual evidence also contradicts this statement, indicating that Obama maintained lifelong relations with his white relatives.” [St. Petersburg Times, 8/1/2008]Insinuations and Leading Questions - Many of Corsi’s allegations are based on little more than questions and insinuations: for example, Corsi insinuates that Obama may not have stopped using marijuana and cocaine, as he admitted to doing during his high school years. Corsi writes: “Still, Obama has yet to answer questions whether he ever dealt drugs, or if he stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended into his law school days or beyond. Did Obama ever use drugs in his days as a community organizer in Chicago, or when he was a state senator from Illinois? How about in the US Senate? If Obama quit using drugs, the public inquiry certain to occur in a general election campaign for the presidency will most certainly aim at the when, how and why…?” According to Media Matters, Obama wrote in his book Dreams from My Father that he stopped using drugs shortly after beginning college. [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] FactCheck notes: “Corsi… slyly insinuates—without offering any evidence—that Obama might have ‘dealt drugs’ in addition to using them. And he falsely claims that Obama has ‘yet to answer’ whether he continued using drugs during his law school days or afterward.… In fact, Obama has answered that question twice, including once in the autobiography that Corsi reviews in his book.” Guilt by Association - Corsi alleges that Obama has links to Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga, and claims that Obama is somehow linked to the violence surrounding the 2007 Kenyan presidential election. He bases his claim on a single visit by Obama and his wife, Michelle, to Kenya, where they publicly took AIDS tests to demonstrate the tests’ safety. In the testing process, Obama spoke briefly to the crowd. Odinga was on stage while Obama spoke. Corsi construes the speech as an Obama endorsement of Odinga, and, as FactCheck writes, “[h]e goes on to attribute all the violence in Kenya to an elaborate Odinga plot.” Corsi ignores the fact that during that trip, Obama also met with the other Kenyan presidential candidate, Mwai Kibaki, and with opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta. Human Rights Watch blamed the violence following the election on both Odinga and Kibaki and their followers. FactCheck notes that Corsi uses the logical fallacy of “guilt by association” to fill Chapters 3 through 7. [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008]Misquoting Other Sources - Media Matters finds that Corsi sometimes misquotes and rewrites source material, as when he attributed a claim concerning Obama’s supposedly untoward business relationship with Rezko to articles in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe, and Salon (.com) that made none of the claims Corsi attributes to them. Corsi also misquoted the conservative Web site NewsMax when he used one of its articles to falsely claim that Obama had been present at Chicago’s Trinity United Church during Reverend Wright’s denunciation of America’s “white arrogance.” (Obama was actually in Miami during Wright’s sermon.) [Media Matters, 8/4/2008] Corsi uses a man he calls one of Obama’s “closest” childhood friends, Indonesian Zulfan Adi, to back his assertion that Obama was once a practicing Muslim. However, Corsi does not report that Adi later retracted his claims about Obama’s religious practices, and admitted to knowing Obama for only a few months. Corsi also ignores a Chicago Tribune story that contains interviews with “dozens of former classmates, teachers, neighbors and friends [who] show that Obama was not a regular practicing Muslim when he was in Indonesia,” and other media reports that have conclusively proven Obama was never a Muslim (see January 22-24, 2008). Ignoring the Obvious - Corsi repeatedly claims that Obama is a master speaker who bedazzles crowds with soaring flights of rhetoric, but never actually gives any specifics of what he intends to do as president. He writes: “At the end of every rhetorically uplifting speech Obama gives about the future of hope, millions of listeners are still left pondering, ‘Now what exactly did he say?’ If the politician is the message, as [campaign manager David] Axelrod and Obama have proclaimed, they can’t forever avoid telling us what precisely that message is.” But FactCheck notes that “Obama’s Web site is packed with details of what he proposes to do if elected. He lays out descriptions of his policy proposals, including tax cuts for most families and increases for those making more than $250,000 per year; a $150 billion, 10-year program to develop alternative energy sources and more efficient vehicles; a proposal to increase the size of the Army by 65,000 troops and another to create a public health insurance plan for those whose employers don’t offer health coverage. Whether or not one agrees with them, Obama has indeed presented detailed plans for dozens of policies. It’s hard to see how anyone writing a book on Obama could fail to acknowledge their existence.” Conspiracy Theorist, 'Bigot,' and Veteran Liar - FactCheck notes: “Corsi is a renowned conspiracy theorist who says that [President] George Bush is attempting to create a North American Union… and that there is evidence that the World Trade Center may have collapsed [after the 9/11 attacks] because it was seeded with explosives. More recently, Corsi claimed that Obama released a fake birth certificate. We’ve debunked that twice now. [M]any of the themes in The Obama Nation are reworked versions of bogus chain e-mail smears.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] In August 2004, Media Matters found that Corsi routinely embraced both extremist opinions and personal invective. Corsi called Islam “a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion.” Of Catholicism, he wrote, “Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press.” Of Muslims themselves, he wrote, “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters—it all goes together.” And of Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), he wrote: “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill [former President Clinton] satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?” [Media Matters, 8/6/2004] (Corsi posted these comments on the Free Republic under the moniker “jrlc,” and identified himself as “jrlc” on March 19, 2004.) [Free Republic, 3/18/2004; Jerome Corsi, 8/7/2004] An Obama campaign spokesman calls Corsi “a discredited, fringe bigot.” [Associated Press, 8/16/2008] FactCheck concludes, “In Corsi’s case, we judge that both his reputation and his latest book fall short when measured by the standards of good scholarship, or even of mediocre journalism.” [FactCheck (.org), 9/15/2008] PolitiFact concludes: “A reader might think that because the book is printed by a mainstream publishing house it is well-researched and credible. On the contrary—we find The Obama Nation to be an unreliable document for factual information about Barack Obama.” [St. Petersburg Times, 8/20/2008]

Sean Hannity. [Source: Halogen Guides (.com)]Conservative radio show host Sean Hannity tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “can’t point to a single instance in which President Bush or [Republican candidate John] McCain or [Bush political adviser] Karl Rove or Sean Hannity or talk radio or any other major Republican has made an issue of Obama’s race.” Hannity’s claim is proven false by data collected by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters. Hannity himself asked his audience on March 2, 2008, “Do the Obamas have a race problem of their own?” He has also repeatedly distorted the content of Michelle Obama’s 1985 Princeton University senior thesis to suggest that Mrs. Obama believes, in Hannity’s words, “blacks must join in solidarity to combat a white oppressor.” (Mrs. Obama was documenting the attitudes of some black Princeton alumni from the 1970s and not expressing her own views.) [Media Matters, 8/7/2008] Media Matters has also documented numerous examples of other radio and TV personalities making “an issue of Obama’s race” (see January 24, 2007, February 1, 2008, May 19, 2008, June 2, 2008, June 26, 2008, and August 1, 2008 and After). The issue of race will continue with conservative pundits and radio hosts (see August 25, 2008, September 22, 2008, October 7, 2008, October 20, 2008, October 22, 2008, October 28, 2008, and November 18, 2008).

Rush Limbaugh, the nation’s most popular conservative radio talk show host, tells his listeners that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was nominated because “nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” As documented by progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Limbaugh, while complaining about “how unqualified Obama is,” says, “I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh continues: “I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them. It’s the reverse of it. They’ve, they’ve ended up nominating and placing at the top of their ticket somebody who’s not qualified, who has not earned it.… It’s perfect affirmative action. And because of all this guilt and the historic nature of things, nobody had the guts to say, well, wait a minute, do we really want to do this?” Limbaugh, in a conversation with a caller, prefaces his comment by saying that “liberals” oppose racism except “when it benefits them… [s]o when, when a precious resource like racism becomes scarce… they will go out and drill for new sources.… You’re exactly right. They understand the principle. They want it for themselves, just not anybody else. Liberals can have two sets of rules: One for the elites, the arrogants and the condescending elites, and the other set of rules for everybody else.… They will exempt themselves from the limiting rules they place on everybody else.” He concludes that Obama’s nomination is “perfect affirmative action. And because of all this guilt and the historic nature of things, nobody had the guts to say, well, wait a minute, do we really want to do this? So they do it and then they start behaving in manners and ways that let us know that they know that they’ve goofed up with the choice. Actually, it’s been somewhat fascinating to watch.” [Media Matters, 8/20/2008; Guardian, 8/24/2008; Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 8/27/2008] Limbaugh and other radio hosts have repeatedly used Obama’s race as a springboard for numerous false and unsupported allegations (see January 24, 2007, February 1, 2008, May 19, 2008, June 2, 2008, June 26, 2008, and August 1, 2008 and After).

Conservative radio host Michael Savage calls the Democratic Party “the minority party,” Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “a minority, a half minority at least,” and both Obama and the Democratic Party are “against the white person.” According to progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, Savage goes on to say of the Democratic Party, “The membership is made up largely of minority blocs, the Hispanic caucus and the gay caucus—caucuses that are all against the white person.” Savage says that Democrats are “trying to pose as a centrist party, trying to win over the white male voter” and continues: “Now, the white women generally are not as hard-nosed about things as the white male, and so many white women don’t even understand that they’re being duped, and they vote for a Democrat, not knowing that they’re digging their own grave.… But now they’re going after the working-class white male, who is traditionally leery of the Sister Helen Prejeans [an opponent of capital punishment], the gay lobby, the caucuses and the other lobbies that are trying to take away his child’s birthright.” [Media Matters, 8/26/2008]

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tells his audience that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “not black.” As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Limbaugh asks the rhetorical question: “Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?… He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa.… [H]e’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American.” Media Matters documents this claim being advanced as far back as February 14, when blogger Kenneth Lamb wrote that Obama “is actually Arab-American [and] not legally African-American.” Lamb produced no evidence of his claim, but since then, conservative bloggers and some radio hosts have repeated the claim. In reality, Obama’s father was a African from Kenya, in the black part of Africa, and his mother was a Caucasian American. [Media Matters, 9/22/2008]

Roger Ailes, a powerful Republican campaign consultant (see 1968, January 25, 1988, and September 21 - October 4, 1988) and the founder and chairman of Fox News (see October 7, 1996), realizes that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to win the upcoming presidential election (see November 4, 2008). In preparation, Ailes begins hiring an array of conservatives to join his network (see November 3, 2003, July 2004, and October 26, 2009), many of whom he intends to groom for the 2012 presidential race. By the time the election is over, Ailes will have hired Karl Rove, the Bush administration’s political guru, and former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR), an unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate. (Ailes is able to woo both Rove and Huckabee away from CNN, which also offers them positions as paid commentators.) Soon, Ailes will hire several more possible Republican contenders, including the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R-AK), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), and former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Ailes fully intends to use Fox News as a platform for launching Republican presidential bids (see May 22, 2011), but his decision to hire Rove, Huckabee, Palin, and the others is also business-driven. A close friend of his will explain: “It would be easy to look at Fox and think it’s conservative because Rupert [Murdoch, the media executive who owns the Fox networks] and Roger are conservative and they program it the way they like. And to a degree, that’s true. But it’s also a business. And the way the business works is, they control conservative commentary the way ESPN controls the market for sports rights. If you have a league, you have a meeting with ESPN, you find out how much they’re willing to pay, and then everyone else agrees to pay the same amount if they want it.… It’s sort of the same at Fox. I was surprised at some of what was being paid until I processed it that way. If you’re ABC and you don’t have Newt Gingrich on a particular morning, you can put someone else on. But if you’re Fox, and Newt is moving and talking today, you got to have him. Otherwise, your people are like: ‘Where’s Newt? Why isn’t he on my channel?’” Ailes met secretly with Palin in September 2008, and will continue to court her for Fox after the campaign, even loaning her a private jet owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation. CNN will decline to offer her a position, and Ailes, through programming chief Bill Shine, will negotiate a three-year, $3 million deal to have Palin as a regular contributor and a host of prime-time specials. Amid all of this, Ailes does not want Fox News to be seen as an arm of the Republican Party (see December 2002 and October 11, 2009). [New York Magazine, 5/22/2011] In 2010, the press will report that Fox News has “exclusive rights” to broadcast and interview four presumed 2012 Republican candidates, Palin, Gingrich, Huckabee, and Santorum (see September 27, 2010).

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Chris Baker promotes an Internet video that features a Harlem preacher calling Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s mother “trash.” Baker discusses the video, by the Reverend James David Manning of ATLAH World Missionary Church, on his radio show, and posts the video on his Web site. Baker says of the video: “Oh God, you have to—you have to see this. This guy—I mean, this guy just goes off. And he’s not really wrong, either. That’s the best part, at least, you know—at least, in my hate-filled opinion.” Manning contrasts Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose daughter Bristol is carrying a child out of wedlock. Manning says: “The difference between Obama’s mama and Bristol Palin is that Obama’s mama was trash. I mean, she was dirt. She was a bag of trash sitting on the sidewalk waiting there in Honolulu on one of those streets for the garbage truck to come by and pick her up and take her to the dump.… [M]y mama told me back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, the only kind of white women that would take up with a black man back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s was a trashy white woman. The only kind of white woman that would take up with a black man in the ‘50s and the ‘60s was a sloozy, was a floozy, was a lowlife, snail-eating, white woman. That’s the kind of woman that Obama’s mama was.… Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let’s talk about that piece of trash called Obama’s mama. Want to talk about Bristol Palin? Let’s talk about that trash that hatched Obama. Yeah.” Obama’s mother, who died in 1995, was a white American, and his father was a black African. [Media Matters, 10/8/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog Web site Media Matters, conservative radio hosts echo the claim that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has never produced a legitimate birth certificate proving his American citizenship, a claim long since debunked (Obama long ago posted a copy on his Web site—see June 13, 2008—and document experts and the Hawaii Department of Health will confirm its validity—see June 27, 2008, August 21, 2008, October 30, 2008, and July 28, 2009). Rick Roberts tells his audience that Obama’s birth certificate “hasn’t… been produced” and that no one in the Obama campaign has ever provided one for public scrutiny. Chris Baker says there “has never been a real birth certificate presented” by Obama. Michael Savage, taking the story one step further, says that the birth certificate “that was produced is a forgery.” Savage also claims that no one in Hawaii, Obama’s birth state, can find the original certificate: It “does not exist, they can’t find it in the Hawaii government. It’s never been produced. The one that was produced is a forgery.… I will never work for a man who has a birth certificate nobody can find. In other words, if you vote for Obama, you’re insane.” Savage goes on to claim that Obama is actually a Kenyan citizen, like his father, another claim long since disproven (see August 1, 2008 and After), and makes an equally illegitimate claim that Obama was educated in an Indonesian madrassa, or radical Islamist school (see January 22-24, 2008), under the name “Barry Soetoro”; Savage even claims that Obama legally changed his name to “Barry Mohammed Soetoro” in Indonesia. No such name change has ever been documented. [Media Matters, 10/14/2008] Weeks later, Savage will assert, without proof, that Obama will visit Hawaii to address the issue of the birth certificate and cloak the trip by ostensibly visiting his gravely ill grandmother (see November 10, 2008).

Rose Tennent and Jim Quinn. [Source: OrbitCast]As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Rose Tennent, on her nationally syndicated talk show Quinn & Rose, says that former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama “because he doesn’t want to be known as an Uncle Tom anymore. He wants to be black again.” Co-host Jim Quinn says of Powell: “He’s tired of being called an Oreo.… [R]emember, when he was in the Bush administration, he was a white guy.” Tennent responds: “Blacks hated him. They—‘Oh, he doesn’t count. It doesn’t count that you have someone black in the administration. He’s not really black, he’s an Uncle Tom.’” Tennent says that Powell’s endorsement of Obama “is racism.” [Media Matters, 10/20/2008]

A photograph of Ashley Todd, with a backwards ‘B’ scratched into her face. Todd claims an Obama supporter beat her and scratched the letter into her face. [Source: Dan Garcia / Hollywood Grind]Twenty-year-old Ashley Todd, a volunteer for the presidential campaign of John McCain (R-AZ), tells Pittsburgh police she was attacked, beaten, and robbed by an African-American male who claimed to be a Barack Obama (D-IL) supporter. According to Todd, the man accosted her at a Citizens Bank ATM in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania. He was brandishing a knife, Todd claims. Todd gave him $60. When the man saw a bumper sticker on her car supporting McCain, she says, he punched her in the back of the head, knocked her down, and beat her, saying, “You are going to be a Barack supporter.” He then pinned her down and used the knife to scratch a “B” (for Barack) into her right cheek; she attempted to fight back, but he said he was going “to teach her a lesson for being a McCain supporter” before actually cutting her. He then fled, Todd says. Todd’s left eye is also bruised. The attack happened around 8:50 p.m.; Todd calls the police around 9:30 p.m., after the attack. She initially refuses medical attention. The next day, however, she will receive a full checkup at a local hospital, including an MRI. Todd says she is not a member of the McCain campaign, but went to Washington, DC, in June for training with the College Republicans. She posted pro-McCain and anti-Obama comments on Twitter in the hours preceding the attack, the last one coming just minutes before she alleges she was accosted. She describes her alleged assailant as a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes, wearing dark-colored jeans, a black undershirt, and black shoes. She emphasizes that her assailant is an Obama supporter. Within hours of the alleged attack, Todd posts comments on Twitter about it, along with allegations that she was targeted deliberately by members of the local Obama campaign and exhortations to support McCain in the upcoming elections (see October 23-24, 2008). The Hollywood Grind, reporting on the incident, observes: “Despite the information we’ve gathered above, there are three things that make us skeptical. First, Ashley is a hardcore McCain supporter, as evidenced by her Twitter updates… that show her posting Twitter updates right up until the alleged attack, then the last post three hours after the attack. Second, she initially refused medical attention, but finally got it the next morning. Third, the ‘B’ scratched on her face is backwards, making it look like it was done in a mirror.” [Associated Press, 10/23/2008; Hollywood Grind, 10/23/2008; Fox News, 10/24/2008; London Times, 10/25/2008] Todd acts suspiciously almost from the moment the police respond to her complaint. She goes to the house of a friend and fellow College Republican, Dan Garcia, a University of Pittsburgh law student. After being told of the alleged attack, Garcia treats her wounds and contacts the police. When an officer arrives at Garcia’s house, Todd becomes belligerent when asked where the attack took place. “I don’t know!” she shouts, using an expletive. “I’m not from here.” Todd, Garcia, and the officer then drive through Bloomfield, the town where Todd alleges the attack occurred, until they arrive at the Citizens Bank on Liberty Avenue. Todd then tells the officer that the Citizens Bank ATM is where she was attacked. She refuses medical attention offered by the officer, and instead leaves with Garcia to go eat at a diner, apparently making some of her Twitter posts during her time at the diner. It is during this time that Garcia takes the photograph of Todd with the scratched “B” on her face. Garcia then persuades her to go to a nearby hospital. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/24/2008] The next day, Todd will admit to lying about the incident, and will admit to inflicting the “B” on herself (see October 24, 2008). It is unclear how much of her story as reported in the press comes from Todd, and how much of it is embellished by a McCain campaign operative (see October 23-24, 2008).

Screenshot of Pamela Geller during an appearance on Fox News. [Source: Conservative News Watch (.org)]Pamela Geller, who owns the far-right blog Atlas Shrugs, posts a long, intricate screed from Rudy Schulz that claims President Obama could not have been born in Hawaii, because his mother Stanley Ann Dunham was attending classes at the University of Washington at the time. Schulz also states his belief, supported by a large amount of supposition and exposition but no real facts, that Obama forged his Hawaiian birth certificate to hide his true father: slain civil rights leader Malcolm X. The claim that Dunham was attending classes in Washington State at the time of his birth was first promoted on conservative news blog WorldNetDaily by author Jerome Corsi (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, and October 9, 2008), who stated, “How Dunham was able to travel the 2,680 air miles from Honolulu to Seattle only a few days after the birth of her baby is not disclosed in the currently available public record concerning President Obama’s birth.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/4/2009] Evidence that Dunham registered for classes at the University of Washington in mid-August 1961, but actually arrived in Washington to begin her coursework in September 1961, with infant Barack in tow, is ignored by Corsi, Schulz, and Geller. [Seattle Times, 2/5/2008] After Geller receives a barrage of criticism and mockery over the “Malcolm X” claim, she updates the original blog post to read: “The ‘Atlas says that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child’ charge has gone viral among leftards and lizards. The only problem with it is that it is false. I am not the author of this post, and I posted it because the writer did a spectacular job documenting Obama’s many connections with the far left. The Malcolm X claim is one minor part of this story, and was of interest to me principally as part of the writer’s documentation that Stanley Ann Dunham could not have been where the Obama camp says she was at various times. I do not believe that Barack Obama is Malcolm X’s love child, and never did—but there remain many, many unanswered questions about his early life and upbringing.” [Pamela Geller, 10/24/2008]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Bill Cunningham, discussing Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s parentage, says of Obama’s father: “[I]magine at the age of one or two seeing your father for the last time. See, his father was a typical black father who, right after the birth, left the baby. That’s what black fathers do. They simply leave.” Cunningham then calls Obama’s mother “a Communist” who married “a radical Muslim,” who he refers to as “Barry Soetoro,” and then “rejected” her son at age 10, resulting in Obama’s being sent to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. [Media Matters, 10/30/2008] However, the name of Obama’s stepfather is Lolo Soetoro, not Barry Soetoro. In addition, he is said not to have been a devout Muslim. For example, according to the New York Times, he was “a nominal Muslim who hung prayer beads over his bed but enjoyed bacon, which Islam forbids.” [New York Times, 4/30/2007]

As reported by progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, conservative radio host Michael Savage tells his audience that President-elect Barack Obama’s grandmother “suspiciously died virtually the night before the election,” in an apparent attempt to question Obama’s pre-election trip to Hawaii. Obama visited his grandmother in late October, shortly before her death on November 3. Savage ties in his questions about Obama’s grandmother and her “suspicious death” to discredited claims that Obama has been unable to verify his US citizenship. Savage tells his listeners: “Well, we don’t even know where Obama was born. His grandmother died the night before the election. There’s a lot of questions around this character that the media won’t answer. Let’s start with what country he’s from. Why was the birth certificate never produced? Why in the world did he take time off from the campaign to visit the grandmother who then suddenly and suspiciously died virtually the night before the election? Tell me about that.” Savage and other conservative commentators have suggested that Obama went to Hawaii, not to visit his gravely ill grandmother, but to address charges that his birth certificate is not valid. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008] Savage is one of a number of conservative radio hosts to spread false rumors about Obama’s birth certificate (see October 8-10, 2008). Obama produced a copy of his birth certificate months before (see June 13, 2008). A number of organizations have verified that Obama’s birth certificate is valid and authentic (see June 27, 2008 and August 21, 2008), as have Hawaii Health Department officials (see October 30, 2008). [St. Petersburg Times, 6/27/2008; WorldNetDaily, 8/23/2008; FactCheck (.org), 11/1/2008] According to Talkers Magazine, Savage is third in talk-radio listenership across the US, behind fellow conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. [Media Matters, 11/14/2008]

Conservative radio host Michael Savage, who has previously accused President-elect Barack Obama of being part of “the first affirmative-action [campaign] in American history” (see February 1, 2008), of being a radical Islamist (see January 10, 2008, February 21, 2008, and April 3, 2008), and of being sympathetic to the Nazis (see March 13, 2008), says Obama will oversee the “wholesale replacement of competent white men” from government jobs through the federal, state, and even local levels. As reported by the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, Savage tells his listeners: “You haven’t seen any of what’s coming in this country. You are going to see the wholesale replacement of competent white men, and I’m targeting exactly the group that’s gonna be thrown out of jobs in the government. And I’ll say it, and I’ll be the first to say it, and I may be not the only—the last to say it. I am telling you that there’s gonna be a wholesale firing of competent white men in the United States government up and down the line, in police departments, in fire departments. Everywhere in America, you’re going to see an exchange that you’ve never seen in history, and it’s not gonna be necessarily for the betterment of this country.” Accusation of 'Social Promotion' - Savage says that Obama was “socially promoted” to the presidency, a disparaging reference to the practice of promoting children to higher grades even if they have not done the work necessary to be promoted, and says: “If you’re socially promoted your whole life and nobody challenges you because you’re of the proper constitution and composition and you look exactly right and no one’s—everyone’s afraid to say a word to you, why, you then go to Harvard, you then go to the law review, you then get elected, you then get elected to the next level. This is what happens in a country that’s intimidated by its own policies and its own fears.” [Media Matters, 11/19/2008]Obama Avoided Mention of Race on College Application? - Some of Obama’s classmates recall that when he applied for Harvard Law School, he refused to indicate his race so as to avoid benefiting from affirmative action, an action the Obama campaign has declined to affirm or deny. In 1990, as a law student defending the program, Obama wrote that he had “undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action” during his educational career. [New York Times, 8/3/2008]

Pastor Steven Anderson. [Source: Jill Stanek]Pastor Steven Anderson of the Tempe Independent Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, delivers an impassioned sermon in which he calls for God to strike down President Obama—to “melt” Obama “like a snail.” When Anderson gives a similar sermon at another church in August 2009 and posts it on YouTube, it will cause an outcry among Obama supporters and media observers. Anderson’s sermon is based on the Bible’s Psalm 58, which details the divine curse laid upon the foes of King David. During it, he quotes Psalm 58, which reads in part: “Break their teeth, Oh God, in their mouths. Break out the great teeth of the young lions, Oh Lord, let them melt away as waters which run continually. When he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let them be as cut in pieces.” [Arizona Republic, 8/29/2009; Talk2Action, 9/1/2009]Calling for Obama's 'Abortion' - Anderson then says: “‘As a snail which melteth,’ Barack Obama, since you want to use your salt solution to kill babies in this country [referring to abortion], Barack Obama, you’re going to reap what you sow because one day, Barack Obama, you’re going to be burning in hell and you’re going to feel a burning sensation all over your skin—which was the same sensation felt by every baby that was aborted in his mother’s womb.… He’s saying, let Barack Obama perish like an abortion. Let Barack Obama perish like a miscarriage.—‘As the untimely birth of a woman, that they may not see the sun.’ Let me tell you something—somebody needs to abort Barack Obama. It’s true.” Denies Calling for Assassination - Anderson continues: “Now, I’m not to do it. I’m not saying vigilanteism. I’m not saying that somebody should go kill. I’m saying there should be a government in this country that, you know, under God’s authority, that takes Barack Obama and aborts him. On television. For everybody to see in the whole world. Did you hear me? Now, I’m not saying I’m going to do it. I’m not a vigilante. But I’m going to tell you something—if there was any justice in this country, if the judicial branch of this country meant anything they would take Barack Obama and all of his colleagues and take them and they would abort him. They would melt him like a snail. That’s what they—they’d break the teeth out of his head, my friends.… And you say, ‘oh, I can’t believe you’re threatening the president,’ I’m not saying I’m going to do it, I just wish God would do it. And he will do it, my friends. And I wish we had a government that would act on God’s behalf. Like the government is supposed to do. You know, the government is supposed to carry out God’s law—enforce God’s laws against murder, against stealing, against lying, against deceit, against adultery. That’s the purpose of human government. And so I’d like to see Barack Obama melt like a snail. I’d like to see the teeth knocked right out of his head. I’d like to see him perish just like an abortion. That’s what David preached. That’s what he prayed to God.” Obama Turning America Communist - Anderson continues: “Now look—we could sit there and say you know… and we’re only talking about one thing that we don’t like about Barack Obama. I could name for you a hundred things that he’s wrong on. I could name for you a hundred.… We’re just talking about one aspect of it—the abortion that he’s fighting for, the murder that he’s fighting for. What about the fact that he’s turning it into a communist nation? That he wants to redistribute the wealth, like Levi Mordachai—also known as Karl Marx? And his Communist Manifesto—[Marx] wanted to redistribute the wealth.” Attacking America's Poor - Anderson continues: “You know, you think I want taken the wealth that I go out and work by the sweat of my face and the sweat of my brow and give it to some lazy jerk in the ghetto, somewhere, who’s never gone to work in their life? I don’t care whether you like that or not, it’s wicked. God said to the man that works, ‘if a man will not work neither shall he eat.’ That’s what the Bible preaches. Why should I go out and work so that some fat slob in the ghetto can get fat off of my food stamps that I’m paying for and EBT—you know, [to audience], what, is it—EBT? You know, ‘I want Domino’s Pizza’—we’ve got a big sign, ‘We Accept EBT.’ You know what I mean? And they probably deliver it on EBT. They don’t even have to leave the house, my friend, they’ll get the pizza delivered to them. And, you pay for it. It’s wicked, it’s stealing. [EBT is a method of delivering federal food stamp monies.] You say, ‘It’s not a moral issue.’—Uh… last time I checked, stealing’s a moral issue. Take money out of my pocket and give it to somebody else—isn’t that in the Ten Commandments? Oh, you know, you just care about these financial issues, gotta care about the moral issues… financial issues are moral issues, my friend. Somebody takes money out of my bank account—it’s immoral. Okay? It’s wrong.” Obama Is 'Pro-Queer' - Anderson asks the audience for their input. “So many other things that we don’t like about Barack Obama. Does anybody… let’s have a little open forum here. Is there a man—and, only men speak in this church—is there a man here that can tell me something else that’s wicked about Barack Obama tonight? Do you have some other policy that you think is wicked?” A member of the congregation says, “Pro queer.” Anderson says: “Gay rights. Thank you, sir. All right, this is great. Gay rights—interactive preaching with pastor Anderson—gay rights, right? Promoting the Sodomites. Pushing not only that but a sodomite agenda in schools. Schools teaching sodomite curriculum. Teaching alternative lifestyles. See, your five-year-olds, your six-year-olds, you seven-year-olds… [you] say they don’t start that young. Well you know what? You only have to drive two hours, my friend. Get in your car and drive two hours and you’ll be in California. And it’s by law being taught in elementary school in the earliest grades. Only drive two hours to get there!” Claims No Racism in Attacks, Says Obama Is 'White' - After more attacks on welfare recipients, Anderson turns to the issue of race. “You know… and, this has nothing to do with race,” he says. “I’m so sick and tired of people calling me a racist for being against Barack Obama. You know, I thought we were past that in this country. You know what I mean? Let it go! I love all people equally—red, yellow, black, and white—they’re Christians inside—I’ve won more black people to the Lord, probably, than I’ve won white people to the Lord my friend. … I have very close friends, right now, that are black. One of my best friends is black. But… [l]et’s get over it. They’re perpetuating the hatred between races by bringing it up all the time. Oh wow—you know, the first black president! No he’s not—he’s white. He’s just as white as he is black. He’s half black, half white. But, yet, he’s just black black black. Why not say he’s white? I mean, if he’s half black and half white, I’m going to say he’s white. That’s the half I want to chase! You know? I’m calling him a white man. We have a white president coming in, my friend. He’s white! Don’t tell me he’s black, he’s white. His mom is white. Her mom is white! Her dad is white. His parents are white. He’s a white man! Barack Obama is white… deal with it!” [Talk2Action, 9/1/2009]Secret Service Inquiry - In August, the Secret Service will interview Anderson to ascertain if he constitutes a threat to the president (see August 29, 2009).

The photo Mayor Grose sent out to, among others, an African-American community member. [Source: Keyanus Price]The mayor of Los Alamitos, a small city in Orange County, California, causes an uproar when he sends a “joke” e-mail that shows the White House with a watermelon patch taking the place of the usual White House garden. The e-mail is entitled “No Easter Egg hunt this year.” Among the recipients are the members of the City Council, and black businesswoman and community volunteer Keyanus Price. Price explains, “I think he’s saying that since there’s a black president, there will be no need to hunt for eggs since they’re growing watermelons in the front yard this year.” Price replies to the e-mail, sent by Mayor Dean Grose, with the response: “Hey, that’s not nice at all. Not all black people like watermelon… you should know better than that.” Grose’s initial reply fails to respond to the racial content, and reads: “The way things are today, you gotta laugh every now and then. I wanna see the coloring contests.” Price says Grose’s response upset her even more than the original e-mail. “As soon as I saw his response; that put me over the top because it was no big deal to him,” she says. “I was horrified when I read that e-mail. What I’m concerned about is how can this person send an e-mail out like this and think it is OK?” When Orange County residents and city leaders begin protesting the racially insensitive e-mail, Grose issues an apology to Price, her boss, and the City Council; it reads in part: “I am deeply embarrassed in receiving your e-mail, and for any harm or hurt that it may have caused. It was poor judgment on my part and was never intended to be offensive to Ms. Price, your company or anyone in the African-American community.… I in no way was representing the City of Los Alamitos, or my role as a council member in sending this out and it went via my private business e-mail. That doesn’t justify the fact that it was sent, however, we gratefully appreciate the contributions that your company makes to our community and I wish to publically apologize to anyone within the firm or organization that may have been offended. I am truly sorry.” Some residents are not mollified. “It appalls me how much racial insensitivity continues in this day and age,” says Aliso Viejo resident Brian Alpers. “Even forwarding e-mails like that continue to perpetuate stereotypes and yes, even racial hatred.” 74-year old Marjorie McDowall says: “It reminds me of my childhood and all the filthy jokes there were about blacks. It’s really offensive. I thought we were beyond that. I really did.” Robert Graham adds: “To me, it’s not so much the e-mail that was sent but the comment that was sent afterward that supports it. For me, as a resident and he being my mayor, it reflects on the rest of our community. He’s our representative not only to the county, but the state as well.” An unidentified person smashes a watermelon in front of Grose’s office, apparently either in protest or retaliation for the e-mail. Two days after sending the e-mail, Grose announces that he will resign as mayor of Los Alamitos. “The attention brought to this matter has sadly created an image of me which is most unfortunate,” he writes. “I recognize that I’ve made a mistake and have taken steps to make sure this is never repeated.” [Orange County Register, 2/24/2009; Orange County Register, 2/24/2009; Orange County Register, 2/26/2009; Orange County Register, 2/26/2009]

The students who run Dartmouth College’s “Generic Good Morning Message” (GGMM), a popular email update, post an essay about incoming college president Jim Yong Kim that many find racist and derogatory. Kim is a noted researcher and human rights advocate, with recent missions to Uganda. The essay includes such statements as: “Unless ‘Jim Yong Kim’ means ‘I love Freedom’ in Chinese, I don’t want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant”; “It was a complete supplies” (employing stereotypical Asian-accented English); “Y’all get ready for an Asianification under the guise of diversity under the actual Malaysian-invasion leadership instituted under the guise of diversity. It’s a slippery slope we are on. I for one want democracy and apple pie, not Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen”; and others. The essay accuses Kim of being an Asian forcing “another hard-working American” out of a job, to be replaced “by an immigrant willing to work in substandard conditions at near-subsistent wage, saving half his money and sending the rest home to his village in the form of traveler’s checks.” GGMM later claims the message was intended as humor and satire, but “was executed in poor taste and offended many people in our community, as well as in the entire campus.… [N]o one on any level thinks what happened this morning was in any way acceptable, GGMM writers included. All seven writers of the GGMM realize the gravity of the statements made in the blitz, regardless of intent, and are taking internal measures towards a resolution.” GGMM will apologize for being racially offensive and acknowledges the lack of oversight on its part. [IvyGate, 3/4/2009]

Betty Brown. [Source: Houston Chronicle]Texas State Representative Betty Brown (R-Terrell) says during House testimony on voter identification legislation that since Asian-Americans often have names that are difficult for other Americans to pronounce, they should just change their names to something “easier for Americans to deal with.” The Texas House Elections Committee hears testimony from Ramey Ko, a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans, who says that Americans of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean descent often have problems with voting and with other forms of identification because they have both a legal transliterated name and then a common English name used on their driver’s license and school registrations. Brown suggests that Asian-Americans find a way to make their names more accessible, asking, “Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese—I understand it’s a rather difficult language—do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Later in the session, she tells Ko, “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?” Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie says Republicans are attempting to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill, and that Brown “is adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments.” Brown refuses to apologize for her statements. A spokesman for Brown, Jordan Berry, says that her comments have nothing to do with race, and are merely focused on overcoming problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes. Democrats are the ones guilty of using racial rhetoric, says Berry, not Brown: “They want this to just be about race.” [Houston Chronicle, 4/9/2009]

FreedomWorks logo. [Source: FreedomWorks]The progressive news and advocacy site Think Progress profiles FreedomWorks, a conservative lobbying firm that uses the practice of “astroturfing” to press its agenda home. FreedomWorks is one of the organizations behind the anti-tax “tea party” movement (see April 8, 2009). The organization denies that it is “astroturfing”—creating fake “citizens groups” that purport to be spontaneously organized grassroots organizations—and compares its work to that of liberal activism group MoveOn.org. However, Think Progress notes that MoveOn is a citizen-organized group, while FreedomWorks is headed by former Republican activists and corporate officials, and is funded by oil, energy, and tobacco companies. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and current Washington lobbyist (R-TX) leads FreedomWorks. [Think Progress, 4/14/2009]'Amateur-Looking' Astroturfing Sites - Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed FreedomWorks’ use of “amateur-looking” Web sites for its “astroturf” groups to bolster their credibility as purported “citizen groups” pushing for corporate interests (see May 16, 2008). [Think Progress, 4/14/2009]Represented by PR Firm with GOP Links - FreedomWorks is represented by the Washington public relations firm Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. Shirley & Banister also represents conservative organizations such as the National Rifle Association, Citizens United, news outlet Human Events, and organizer Richard Viguerie’s direct-mail firm. (It also represents the Bradley Foundation, a conservative funding organization that in 2008 gave $25,000 to both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity [AFP], gave FreedomWorks $75,000 in 2009, and is considering a grant request from AFP.) One of Shirley & Banister’s partners is Craig Shirley, a veteran Republican PR operative who helped develop the overtly racist 1988 “Willie Horton” political ad (see September 21 - October 4, 1988). Progressive MSNBC host Rachel Maddow tells her audience: “This is a perfect system for the Republican Party. It’s a constant feedback loop. The Republican Party activists stir up fear and anger on the Internet… Fearful, angry people go to town hall events and then Republican Party officials say they are just responding to that anger and they have no idea where it came from. It’s [a] perfect cycle. Rile them up with made-up stuff and then sympathize with them that are so riled.” [MSNBC, 8/14/2009; MSNBC, 8/17/2009]Led by Millionaires - Three of FreedomWorks’ most prominent senior officials are millionaires. Armey makes over $500,000 a year working for the organization, and lives in a Texas home valued at $1.7 million. FreedomWorks president Matthew Kibbe lives on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, in a home valued at $1.17 million. Board member Steve Forbes, the billionaire publisher of Forbes magazine, lives in a New Jersey home valued at $2.78 million, owns a chateau in France, and recently sold a private island in Fiji and a palace in Morocco. [Wall Street Journal, 5/16/2008]FreedomWorks Supports Armey's Lobbying Efforts - Armey’s lobbying firm, DLA Piper, represents pharmaceutical firms such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, medical device supplier SleepMed, health care provider Metropolitan Health Networks, and another pharmaceutical firm, Medicines Company. One member of FreedomWorks’s board of directors is Richard Stephenson, the founder and chairman of Cancer Treatment Centers of America. He is also the president of International Capital and Management Company, which runs a hospital consulting company. The president of FreedomWorks is Matt Kibbe, the former senior economist for the Republican National Committee and the former chief of staff for Representative Dan Miller (R-FL). FreedomWorks is organizing protests against health care reform that would cut into pharmaceutical firms’ profits. DLA Piper represents a number of life insurance firms; FreedomWorks has organized support for the deregulation of the insurance industry. DLA Piper represents not only several American oil firms, but also Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on energy related issues such as maintaining the close ties between the US and the UAE. US oil firms are deeply involved in the UAE’s oil industry. [Center for Responsive Politics, 2009; Think Progress, 4/14/2009; MSNBC, 8/12/2009] In August 2009, after reporting on FreedomWorks, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow will tell her audience: “Washington lobbyists and health care executives and former Republican Party officials have just as much a right to shout down the policy debate about health care reform as anyone else does. These folks have just as much a right to try to derail this entire process as anyone else does. But we have a right to know who they are and who is paying them for their efforts. These guys are pros. This is an industry. This is beltway politics being organized and played out in town halls across the country.” [MSNBC, 8/12/2009] DLA Piper has also received $830,000 this year, so far, from the pharmaceutical firm Medicines Company; the same firm paid DLA Piper $1.5 million in 2008. [MSNBC, 8/7/2009]FreedomWorks Lobbying on Behalf of DLA Piper? - In August 2009, Maddow will ask, “[W]hy are DLA Piper’s clients relevant?” She answers herself, “There appears to be some pretty good evidence that when you pay Dick Armey’s lobbying firm, DLA Piper, you get what Dick Armey’s grassroots organization FreedomWorks does.” In the first half of 2007, the American Council of Life Insurers paid DLA Piper $100,000 to lobby on its behalf. During that time span, FreedomWorks began lobbying Congress on a “grassroots” basis to deregulate the life insurance industry. Maddow will sarcastically ask: “And, of course, perhaps it is just mere coincidence that FreedomWorks happened to have a newfound, ideological, purist grassroots commitment to life insurance deregulation at the same time the American Council of Life Insurers hired Dick Armey’s lobbying firm. It could just be a coincidence. Could be, right?” In 2006, DLA Piper began lobbying for the Senado de Republica, the Mexican Senate, for the purpose of “enhancing US-Mexico relations.” At the same time, FreedomWorks began promoting itself as “one of the few organizations willing to aggressively promote meaningful immigration reform.” In 2004, during the Bush administration’s push to privatize Social Security, a single mom from Iowa was introduced at a White House economic conference as a supporter of privatization. That mom was a FreedomWorks employee. Maddow will say: “This is how FreedomWorks does their work. They try to create the impression that their just regular grassroots Americans without any financial or political interests in the outcome of these policy fights.” [MSNBC, 8/12/2009]

Tom Tancredo (R-CA), a former House member and 2008 presidential candidate known for his radical isolationism and anti-immigrant views (see September 9, 2006), tells MSNBC host Ed Schultz that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is a racist. Tancredo uses a statement from 2001 that seems to suggest Sotomayor believes Latinas (Hispanic women) make better rulings than white males (see October 26, 2001) to launch his attack. “I’m telling you she appears to be a racist,” Tancredo says. “She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter. Well, man. Where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that? There’s plenty of stuff.” Another guest, liberal columnist Bill Press, says that Sotomayor will get no “special protection” because of her race and gender, to which Tancredo scoffs, “Oh, jeez.” Responding to Press’s reiteration of Sotomayor’s extensive judicial background, Tancredo says: “You can still be a racist and have all of those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all of that stuff in your background. One does not preclude the other.” Schultz asks his third guest, reporter Mike Allen, if he would “check out to see if she had some racist comments?” Allen responds, “No,” to which Tancredo says: “You won’t do it? You won’t check it out? There you go.… They won’t even check it out.” Tancredo also calls Sotomayor a “radical” and in the same sentence admits he knows nothing of her judicial record. Allen says of Tancredo’s remarks, “Ed, we’re getting a preview here of a lot of phony outrage, theatrics, posturing.” [MSNBC, 5/26/2009]

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) says that because Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is what he calls a “Latina woman racist,” she should immediately withdraw her nomination. Gingrich bases his remark on a 2001 comment by Sotomayor in which she said she “hopes that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” (see October 26, 2001). Sending a text message on Twitter, Gingrich writes: “Imagine a judicial nominee said, ‘My experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.’ New racism is no better than old racism.” He follows with another message: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.” Republican National Committee (RNC) media chairman Todd Herman quickly “retweets” Gingrich’s message, which usually signifies agreement with the message, but the RNC will refuse to say whether or not it officially endorses Gingrich’s comment. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replies that Gingrich is probably not the best source of information or guidance on the issue, and warns against excessive rhetoric: “I think it is probably important for any involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of the impending confirmation. I think we’re satisfied that when the people of America and the people of the Senate get a chance to look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker that they’ll come to the same conclusion that the president did.” [Think Progress, 5/27/2009; Plum Line, 5/27/2009; Washington Times, 5/28/2009] Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, refuses to align himself with Gingrich’s characterization. Asked about Gingrich’s remark, Hatch says, “No, I don’t agree with that.” [Think Progress, 5/27/2009] Days later, Gingrich will appear to withdraw the “racist” characterization, although he will go on to accuse Sotomayor of “betray[ing]” the “American system” of law (see June 3, 2009).

National Council of La Raza logo. [Source: National Council of La Raza]Former House member Tom Tancredo (R-CO—see September 9, 2006) continues his attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009). As in his earlier commentary, Tancredo vilifies Sotomayor over her supposed racism. On CNN, Tancredo says that her affiliation with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a Hispanic civil rights group, is the equivalent of a white person belonging to the Ku Klux Klan. “If you belong to an organization called La Raza, in this case, which is, from my point of view anyway, nothing more than a Latino—it’s a counterpart—a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses,” he says. “If you belong to something like that in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race. Even though the logo of La Raza is ‘All for the race. Nothing for the rest.’ What does that tell you?” When host Rick Sanchez attempts to redirect Tancredo from his statements about the civil rights group, Tancredo shouts: “She’s a member! She’s a member of La Raza!” [Think Progress, 5/28/2009; NewsMax, 5/28/2009] Liberal news website Think Progress notes that La Raza has been targeted by conservative critics since the 2006 immigration rallies, with some making the false claim that La Raza advocates the secession of the Western United States “as a Hispanic-only homeland,” and right-wing blogs calling the organization “an anti-white extremist group.” In reality, La Raza is the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy group, focusing primarily on “civil rights/immigration, education, employment and economic status, and health.” The name “La Raza” translates to “the people,” not “the race,” as Tancredo insists. And the group’s motto is not “All for the race, nothing for the rest,” as Tancredo says, it is actually “Strengthening America by promoting the advancement of Latino families.” La Raza, or NCLR as it is officially known, points to its recognition by the Office of the Surgeon General and the Leadership Council for Civil Rights for its efforts on behalf of underprivileged Hispanic-Americans, and its work alongside Habitat for Humanity and the Heritage Foundation as a nonprofit organization working for positive social change. [National Council of La Raza, 2009; Think Progress, 5/28/2009]

David Duke. [Source: Hip Hop Republican (.com)]Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, continuing the attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), says that Sotomayor “brings a form of bigotry and racism to the court” similar to views espoused by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Within hours, Duke counters on his own Web site, disparaging Limbaugh’s comparison and claiming that while he believes Sotomayor is a racist, he himself has never embraced racist views. “Limbaugh, a recent addict to illegal drugs, has no business making personal attacks against me for my past,” Duke writes. “I have consistently supported true equal rights, stating again and again that I support the best-qualified person regardless of race in hiring and promotions.” Duke goes on to write that Sotomayor’s racism is “proven” by remarks she made during a 2001 speech in which she said a “wise Latina” judge would often make better decisions than a white male (see October 26, 2001), and calls her “an activist for radical-Left Mexican organizations and an enthusiastic proponent of racial discrimination against White people called affirmative action” (see May 28, 2009). He then claims that her nomination is part of an overarching Jewish conspiracy to control “any person who is influential or who may at some point in the future become influential.” [Think Progress, 6/1/2009]

Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan continues to attack Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009), this time during an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. Buchanan continues his allegations that Sotomayor is an “affirmative action nominee” (see May 28, 2009), and mocks her recent discussion of her difficulties with the English language: Sotomayor told a New York Times reporter that during her first years in college, she honed her English skills by reading children’s books, practiced with lower-level grammar books, and worked with a professor who provided her tutoring in the language. Buchanan says in reference to the article: “Well I, again in that Saturday piece, she went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said. But she herself said she read, basically classic children’s books to read and learn the language and she read basic English grammars and she got help from tutors. I think that, I mean if you’re, frankly if you’re in college and you’re working on Pinocchio or on the troll under the bridge, I don’t think that’s college work.” The article did not characterize her outside, self-directed remedial work with English as “college work.” Amanda Terkel, a reporter for left-leaning Think Progress, will note: “Buchanan has long claimed that Hispanic immigrants are resistant to learning English and has said that it would be easier for them to ‘assimilate’ if they did so.… So basically, Buchanan yells when Hispanics are allegedly unwilling to learn English. However, when they make an attempt to do so, he mocks them as being dumb.” [New York Times, 5/30/2009; Think Progress, 6/1/2009]

A doctored photo of Sotomayor issued by the Council of Conservative Citizens. The robe and hood have been added to the photo, as has the ‘raised-fist’ logo. [Source: Council of Conservative Citizens / Think Progress]The Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a pro-segregation group that the Southern Poverty Law Center has called “brazenly racist,” posts a doctored photograph of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) on its Web site. The altered photograph depicts Sotomayor wearing what appears to be a robe and hood similar to those worn by members of the Ku Klux Klan. The robe has a raised fist and the words “La Raza.” Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a Hispanic civil rights organization which some conservatives have falsely claimed is a racist organization (see May 28, 2009 and May 29, 2009). An NCLR spokesman confirms that the logo in the photograph is not used on any basis by the organization. [Think Progress, 6/2/2009]

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele implies that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) has racist tendencies, a week after urging fellow Republicans to stop “slammin’ and rammin’” Sotomayor over the issue of race and deal with her nomination on the issues (see May 29, 2009). While guest-hosting William Bennett’s radio show, Steele discusses criticisms that have been made of Sotomayor. “[T]he comments that she made that have been played up about, you know, the Latina woman being a better judge than the white male is something that she has said on numerous occasions,” Steele tells a caller (see October 26, 2001). “So this was not just the one and only time it was said. They’ve now found other evidences and other speeches… that she has made mention of this, this fact that her ethnicity, that her cultural background puts her in a different position as a judge to judge your case.… And God help you if you’re a white male coming before her bench.” A recent analysis of Sotomayor’s decisions as a judge in race-based cases proves that she does not discriminate against white plaintiffs (see May 29, 2009). [Think Progress, 6/5/2009] Four days later, Steele will defend his remarks. “Well, that’s not inflammatory,” he tells a CNN audience. “It’s based off of what—the inference that she left and what she said. You know, if you have a judge, where you have a situation where you have—you’re going before a trier of fact, and the trier of fact is on record as saying that this individual’s background experience is better positioned to make a decision than someone else, that gives one pause. And so my view of it was, in looking at it, you’re now segregating out white men by your comments. So, God help you if you’re a white male. If you’re seeking justice, this may not be the bench you want to go before.” [Think Progress, 6/10/2009]

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who recently seemed to retract his characterization of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor as a “racist” (see May 27, 2009 and June 3, 2009), now calls Sotomayor a “racialist.” On CBS News’s Face the Nation, Gingrich says: “When I did a Twitter about her, having read what she said, I said that was racist—but I applied it to her as a person. And the truth is I don’t know her as a person. It’s clear that what she said was racist, and it’s clear—or as somebody wrote recently, ‘racialist’ if you prefer.” [Think Progress, 6/7/2009]

Conservative author and pundit Pat Buchanan continues the argument that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) is a product of “affirmative action” (see May 28, 2009, May 29, 2009, and May 31, 2009). “By her own admission, Sotomayor is an ‘affirmative action baby,’” Buchanan writes, referring to a panel discussion from the early 1990s where she called herself a “product of affirmative action.” Buchanan writes that her stellar academic record, including graduating at the top of her class at both Princeton and Yale, is “a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.… Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review—all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender, or ethnicity. This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries. One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated ‘with the base alloy of hypocrisy.’” [Human Events, 6/12/2009; Media Matters, 6/14/2009]

English-only advocates Pat Buchanan and white nationalist Peter Brimelow standing under misspelled banner. [Source: Think Progress (.org)]Right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan and his organization The American Cause host a conference to discuss how Republicans can regain a political majority. The conference is co-sponsored by a number of white nationalist and white advocacy groups. The conference features a panel discussion supporting English-only initiatives as a way to attract “working-class white Democrats” to the Republican Party, and in the process ridicules Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (see May 26, 2009) for her use of children’s books to study English while she was in college (see May 31, 2009). The panelists also suggest that, without English as the official language of the US, President Obama would force Americans to speak Spanish. The conference’s English-only advocates apparently do not notice that the banner hanging over the festivities prominently misspells the word “conference” as “conferenece.” [Media Matters, 6/11/2009; Think Progress, 6/22/2009]

L.E. Ikenga, a Nigerian-American woman who has published numerous essays and articles in conservative publications, writes in the conservative blog American Thinker that President Obama holds the African-centric views of his Kenyan father, and has “adopt[ed]… a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.” Ikenga writes: “[D]espite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself—those of us who know our history—have seen this movie before.” She accuses Obama of conducting a “masquerade” as an American who believes in democracy, when he really identifies with his Kenyan heritage and is “intrinsically undemocratic.” His true intentions are those of any “African colonial politician,” she writes: “a complete power grab whereby the ‘will of the people’ becomes completely irrelevant.” Ikenga writes that Obama is using the United States to play out his African colonial dreams of power. She bases her assertion on material drawn from his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, which she calls “an eloquent piece of political propaganda.” In Ikenga’s reading of the book, Obama “clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American,” which she says he proved by actually going to Kenya to visit the homeland of his father. This visit, she says, “provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.” She concludes by warning that “the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.” [Fresh Conservative, 2009; L.E. Ikenga, 6/25/2009] The next day, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh will read extensively from Ikenga’s article, which he calls “a special piece.” He concludes that Obama is “more African in his roots than he is American,” and declares: “[Obama] wants to turn this into a third world country.… The only way to try to do this is to just attack the private sector and deplete it of its resources, of its money, of its capital, which is exactly what he is doing.… We’ve elected somebody who is more African in his roots than he is American, loves his father who is a Marxist, and is behaving like an African colonial despot.” [Media Matters, 6/26/2009]

Brian Kilmeade, co-host of Fox News’s morning show Fox & Friends, during a discussion of marriage practices in Sweden and Finland, says that Americans don’t have “pure genes” like Swedes because “we keep marrying other species and other ethnics.” [Media Matters, 7/8/2009; Media Matters, 7/20/2009] Two weeks later, Kilmeade will apologize for his remark, calling it “offensive to many people” and “inappropriate.” America is a “huge melting pot,” he says, “and that’s what makes us such a great country.” [Media Matters, 7/20/2009]

Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan, during their discussion of Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. [Source: MSNBC / Crooks and Liars]As the Senate readies to vote for or against Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court (see August 6, 2009), conservative commentator and author Pat Buchanan attempts to explain why he feels Sotomayor should not be confirmed. Affirmative Action Accusation - Buchanan, interviewed by MSNBC’s progressive host Rachel Maddow, has accused Sotomayor of being an “affirmative action” selection for the bench (see May 28, 2009, May 31, 2009, June 12, 2009, and June 20, 2009) who uses her position to “discriminate against white males.” As evidence of his claim, he says: “I do believe she’s an affirmative action appointment by the president of the United States. He eliminated everyone but four women and then he picked the Hispanic.” Maddow asks him to define affirmative action, and Buchanan replies, “Affirmative action is to increase diversity by discriminating against white males.” After citing four court cases, he adds: “[A]ffirmative action is basically reverse discrimination against white males and it’s as wrong as discrimination against black females and Hispanics and others. And that’s why I oppose it.” White People Built America, Buchanan Says - In her turn, Maddow asks, “Why do you think is that of the 110 Supreme Court justices we’ve had in this country, 108 of them have been white?” to which Buchanan responds: “Well, I think white men were 100 percent of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100 percent of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100 percent of people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Probably close to 100 percent of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks in this country who are 90 percent of the entire nation—in 1960, when I was growing up, Rachel—and the other 10 percent were African-American who had been discriminated against. That’s why.” Maddow asks if he believes “there are 108 of 110 white Supreme Court justices because white people essentially deserve to have 99.5 percent of those positions? That there’s nothing—that doesn’t reflect any sort of barrier to those positions by people who aren’t white. You think that’s what they’ve—you think that’s just purely on the basis of what white people have deserved to get?” Back to Affirmative Action - Buchanan shifts his argument and asserts that the Supreme Court should have the nine finest legal minds and scholars, regardless of race or gender. “But this one doesn’t have that. She was appointed because she’s a Latina, a Hispanic, and a woman.” Maddow counters with Sotomayor’s extensive experience, saying: “She is also the judicial nominee who has more judging experience than any judge has gone up in, say, in the past, I don’t know, what is it, 70 years? She has been an appellate court judge of some distinction for a lot longer than [Chief Justice John] Roberts was, [Justice Samuel] Alito was. I mean, it’s not like she was—she was picked out… she was like picked out of the minor leagues and brought up here, Pat.” Buchanan returns to his affirmative action argument, noting that Sotomayor agreed that she was granted admission to Princeton University because of the program. Buchanan goes farther, accusing her of receiving preferential treatment for all of her accomplishments, including her stint on the Yale Law Review and her appointment to the federal bench. Maddow, battling through Buchanan’s attempts to interrupt her, defends the affirmative action program, saying: “[W]hat our country needs is to be able to choose from the largest possible pool of talent in order to be able to pick the people who are going to have to function at the highest levels so that our country can compete and our country to do all the hard things we need do, I would hope that you would see that picking 108 out of 110 white justices… to the Supreme Court means that other people aren’t actually being appropriately considered. And the reason that you have affirmative action is that you recognize that the fact that people were discriminated against for hundreds of years in this country means that you sort of gained the system, unless you give other people a leg up.” She continues, “But, Pat, for you to argue that there’s no basis on which the United States benefits… from having Hispanics be among the people who we choose the best and brightest from defies belief.… The idea that you think we’ll best serve by only choosing among 99.9 percent white people.… [W]hen I look at the United States Supreme Court and I see 108 out of 110 white people, I see 108 out of 110 men. I’m—I don’t look at that and think, ‘God, white guys are naturally better at this type of work than other people who aren’t getting these jobs.’ I don’t think that way.… I want to hear you—I would love to hear your answer as to whether or not you think that is what explains it, too. Because, I think, what the more obvious explanation is, is that you have to be a white guy in order to get considered for these jobs and has been true since the dawn of time in this country.… That’s starting to break up now so that we can tap a bigger pool of talent. You should be happy about that for your country, Pat.” Buchanan counters that whites “are victims of this evil affirmative action policy which says in effect that everybody’s covered by the 14th Amendment and the civil rights laws unless you’re a white male and your parents and ancestors came from Europe. Then we can discriminate against you. That’s what I am against.” Stirring 'Up Racial Animus' - Countering Buchanan’s accusations of reverse racism, Maddow says: “Pat, I couldn’t disagree with you more. I tribute—I credit you sticking to your gun. I think you’re absolutely wrong about this and I think that by advocating that the Republican Party try to stir up racial animus among white voters.… You’re dating yourself.” Buchanan says that the government should “defend the legitimate rights of white working-class folks who are the victims of discrimination, because that’s the right thing to do and because it’s the politically right thing to do.” Maddow concludes: “A lot of things divide us, Pat. Race is one of those. But there’s a lot of other ways in which we just gratify as a country, and for you to privilege race and say that what we really need to make sure we tap, politically, is white people’s racial grievances, you’re playing with fire and you’re dating yourself. You’re living in the 1950s, Pat.” [MSNBC, 7/17/2009]

Laura Ingraham. [Source: Pat Dollard]Fox News and radio talk show host Sean Hannity tells his radio audience of the op-ed published in the morning’s New York Post by health industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey, claiming that the Democrats’ health care reform proposal would result in senior citizens being advised to end their lives prematurely (see July 16, 2009). Hannity says: “[I]t sounds to me like they’re actually encouraging seniors in the end, ‘Well, you may just want to consider packing it all in here, this is—’ what other way is there to describe this?… So that they don’t become a financial burden on the Obamacare system? I mean that’s how they intend to cut cost, by cutting down on the health care we can give and get at the end of our lives and dramatically cutting it down for senior citizens? You know, welcome to the brave new world of Obamacare. We’re going to encourage, you know, inconvenient people to consider ‘alternatives to living.’” The same day, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham tells her listeners: “Can you imagine—if I were doing Saturday Night Live, like, if I were producing it this weekend, and I was going to be fair about political humor, I would have a hospice chute—like a door, a trap door that goes into a chute where the elderly would just walk up—‘Oh, my hip hurts.’ And all of a sudden you see this leg kicking granny down the chute, and that’s Obamacare.” She continues by making a veiled reference to Nazi concentration camps: “[S]ome will call them death camps, but this is the way Obamacare is gonna go for America.” And on the same day, conservative radio hosts Jim Quinn and Rose Tennent echo Hannity and Ingraham’s claims. Quinn says, “[T]here’s a drop dead date, you should pardon the expression but a lot of us are going to—” Tennent interjects, “Are going to drop dead, yeah.” Quinn then adds, “For heaven’s sakes, this is the death-to-old-people plan.” [Media Matters, 7/17/2009]

Author Jerome Corsi, who has made a number of disproven and debunked claims concerning President Obama’s citizenship (see August 1, 2008 and After, August 15, 2008, October 8, 2008, and October 9, 2008), now claims that he has “proof” Obama’s attendance and exemplary performance at Harvard Law School were engineered by a Saudi prince through the auspices of an African-American Muslim radical. He points to Obama’s decision not to release his college transcripts as circumstantial evidence (see September 11, 2008), saying that decision “prevents resolution of a continuing controversy over whether radical Islamic influences promoted his admission and financed his legal education there.” The “continuing controversy” centers on a lawyer named Percy Sutton, who claims that Islamic radical Khalid Abdullah Tariq al-Mansour, “one of the world’s wealthiest men,” asked him to write a letter of recommendation to Harvard Law School for then relatively unknown Barack Obama. Sutton says al-Mansour, a Saudi citizen, introduced him to Obama, and says al-Mansour was raising money for Obama to attend Harvard. Sutton says al-Mansour was a “principal adviser” to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who, Sutton says, actually engineered Obama’s acceptance to Harvard. According to Sutton, he was told in a letter from al-Mansour: “There’s a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends left there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?” Sutton says he did write the letter, and told friends at Harvard, “I thought there was going to be a genius that was going to be available and I certainly hoped they would treat him kindly.” The Obama campaign denied the story during the 2008 presidential campaign. Sutton, who is in his 80s and apparently suffers from some sort of senile dementia or memory loss that precludes him being contacted by Corsi or other members of the press, has made his allegations in a YouTube video that Corsi cites as his “proof.” In 2008, Politico reporter Ben Smith contacted al-Mansour, who confirmed Sutton was “a dear friend, his health is not good” and said he’s sure Sutton wrote a letter for someone else, “and he got it confused.” Corsi has requested that the White House release all of Obama’s law school records to “resolve the issue.” Al-Mansour, Corsi claims, was originally Don Warden, a member of the 1960s Black Panthers. [WorldNetDaily, 7/21/2009]

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